The Global Net Zero Financial Cartel, Falling Apart

January 11, 2025/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

Less than three weeks ago, on December 23, in a post on optimism about the potential demise of the green energy fantasy, I took note that two of the largest U.S. banks had just quit something called the “Net Zero Banking Alliance.” The two were Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo. These two banks, along with many others, including all of the biggest ones, had joined the NZBA as it was getting organized under auspices of the UN back in 2021. NZBA, together with other related groups organized around the same time, aspired to be cartels of financial institutions that would save the planet by starving hydrocarbon fuels of all investment capital, while re-directing the money to the “green” energy transition. Now, shortly after the re-election of Donald Trump, two of the biggest banking giants had decided to exit. Could this be a sign that the zero-carbon green energy fantasy was losing its grip?

In the short 19 days since that post, the trickle of resignations from the NZBA and related groups has turned into an avalanche. In the blink of an eye, what once seemed a serious threat that hydrocarbon fuels could be snuffed out by a group boycott of investors has almost entirely gone away.

More on the latest developments later in this post. But first, some history of NZBA and the related alphabet soup of do-gooders.

2021 was the year that the UN’s big climate confab, known as the “Conference of Parties” or “COP,” was to be held in Glasgow, Scotland. Although the COPs are normally held every year, there had not been one in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic. After the year hiatus, COP-26 was ultimately held from October 31 to November 13, 2021. Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the UK, who had converted from one-time climate skeptic to all-in alarmist, was determined to make this COP-26 the be-all and end-all of all COPs. The swarms of little aspiring tyrants in UN bureaucracies, just off their hugely successful Covid power grabs, were ready to flex their new muscles in the climate arena.

In the many months of preparations for the Glasgow conference, the UN got the bright idea of organizing all of the world’s big financial institutions into cartels to direct their capital to an “energy transition” and away from hydrocarbon fuels. To achieve this goal, in April 2021 there was formed an entity called the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, or GFANZ. According to its website:

The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) brings together leading financial institutions and other financial services sector participants who have individually decided to support the objectives of mobilizing capital and addressing the barriers companies face to scaling decarbonization. . . . GFANZ was founded to establish a forum for addressing and catalysing action toward the sector-wide challenges and opportunities associated with the net-zero transition.

The moving force behind this initiative appears to have been a guy named Mark Carney. Have you heard of him? Carney is a native Canadian, and a big-time guru in the central banking world: he was the Governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013, and then promptly moved to become the Governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020 (the first non-Brit to hold that position). 

Along the way, Carney became one of the top evangelists of the climate alarm religion. Upon leaving the Bank of England, he hopped over to the UN, where he got the highfalutin title of “Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance.” According to its website, “GFANZ was launched in April 2021 by UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance Mark Carney and the COP26 presidency to accelerate the transition to a net-zero global economy.”

Carney became the Chair of GFANZ. By the time of COP-26 in November 2021, Carney had also recruited to join him as Co-Chair none other than the ultimate climate hypocrite, Mike Bloomberg (of the seven houses and eight private aircraft). According to the GFANZ website, the two remain Co-Chairs today.

GFANZ was then instrumental in organizing a series of subsidiary groups divided by industry sector. Relevant to today’s post are the NZBA (formed contemporaneously with GFANZ in April 2021), and the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, NZAMI, which actually had been launched a little earlier in December 2020.

Both the NZBA and the NZAMI were rapidly successful in recruiting to their membership essentially all the biggest names in their industry sectors. The missions statements of the groups are written in a bureaucratic style that makes them difficult to understand, but it is clear at least that the idea is to stop the financing of the hydrocarbon fuel industry. For example, here is the first item of the “Commitment Statement” of the NZAB:

Transition the operational and attributable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from their lending and investment portfolios to align with pathways to net-zero by 2050 or sooner.

Which brings me to the latest developments: The exits from the NZAB of Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo in early December quickly opened the barn doors for the other big players to rush out. On December 31, Reuters reported that Citibank and Bank of America had just quit the NZAB. Morgan Stanley announced its exit on January 2. JP Morgan quit on January 7. These six big banks among them have a market share of more than 25% of the entire U.S. banking industry.

And then, just yesterday, the largest asset manager in the country, BlackRock, quit the NZAMI. Of the three largest asset managers, another one, Vanguard, had already quit back in 2022. That leaves only State Street remaining, of the big three.

Meanwhile, in case you are wondering what is going on with Mark Carney, he appears to be a leading candidate for leader of Canada’s Liberal Party now that Justin Trudeau has quit. The CBC, in a piece yesterday, says that Carney has the backing of some 30 Liberal MPs. That would mean that Carney could become the next Prime Minister of Canada, should the Liberals win the election expected to be held some time this year. On the other hand, according to the latest polls, it looks like the Liberals are headed toward one of the most decisive wipe-outs in the history of Canada. This poll, from CBC News on January 6, concludes that if the election were held that day, the Conservatives would win approximately 227 seats to the Liberals’ 44 (in a Parliament of 338).

So Carney may get a chance to test how well the climate alarm message continues to sell to the Canadian voter. So far, it’s not looking good.

Good Riddance, Justin Trudeau

January 7, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Canadian politicians have often taken a wise approach to public policy (such as school choice, welfare reform, corporate tax reform, bank bailouts, regulatory budgeting, spending restraint, the tax treatment of saving, and privatization of air traffic control).

But all of that is ancient history. Or, to be more accurate, it is a list of things that happened before Canada made the mistake of electing Justin Trudeau to be Prime Minister.

Trudeau just announced he is stepping down, but during his nine-plus years in power as head of the Liberal Party, he was a doctrinaire statist, relentlessly pushing for more government and less freedom.

• More spending
• Higher taxes
• Financial repression
• Gun control
• Inflation

As a fiscal policy wonk, I usually focus on the burden of government spending.

So here’s a chart, based on IMF data, showing average annual spending increases under Justin Trudeau (2015-2025), his Conservative Party predecessor (2006-2015), and the preceding Liberal Party governments (1993-2006).

To be fair, the IMF data is for total government spending, so it’s possible that some of the prime ministers on the list would look slightly better or slightly worse if I used data for just the central government. But I can’t imagine such a chart would look significantly different.

That being said, there are two big takeaways from the above chart, one that is obvious and one that may be surprising.

• First, Trudeau has been a big spender.
• Second, there was genuine spending restraint under the leadership of Prime Ministers Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, so the Liberal Party has had responsible leaders in the past (just as Bill Clinton showed that Democrats could have responsible leaders).

I could probably even add a third point, highlighting the somewhat disappointing performance of Stephen Harper, the Conservative Party Prime Minister (just as Republican presidents often have sub-par records on spending in the United States).

But let’s keep the focus today on Justin Trudeau. So here are a few additional policy tidbits.

• Canada’s score on the International Tax Competitive Index dropped from 68.7 in 2015 to 66.7 in 2024.
• The burden of government spending increased from 40.7 percent of GDP in 2015 to 42.3 percent of GDP in 2025
• The tax burden under Trudeau increased from 40 percent of GDP in 2015 to 41.2 percent of GDP in 2025.
• Canada’s economic freedom score has declined from 8.20 in 2015 to 7.99 in the latest Economic Freedom of the World.

The net effect of Trudeau is that Canada has a bigger burden of government.

What has that meant for the Canadian economy? As you might expect, there’s been less growth. Here’s a chart shared by Patrick Hedger.

The divergence with the United States (which I wrote about a few months ago) is especially damning since the United States had not enjoyed strong growth.

But tepid growth beats zero growth. And zero growth seems to be Trudeau’s legacy.

I’ll close with a few observation about Pierre Poilievre, the current leader of the Conservative Party and likely future Prime Minister. His campaign is based on four issues.

• Eliminate the carbon tax
• Cut back housing restrictions
• Crime control
• Fiscal restraint

All of that sounds good, but I never trust political rhetoric. Maybe he’ll wind up being a big spender, like Donald Trump or George W. Bush.

But I hope he becomes the Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher of Canada, in which case I’ll be very happy.

And if he becomes the Javier Milei of Canada, I’ll be overjoyed.

Trudeau’s Class-Warfare Tax Policy Is Bad News for Canada

April 29, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

The tax bias against saving and investment is a major problem in the United States and many other nations.

According to the latest-available data from the Tax Foundation, the worst of the worst is Canada.

So how does Canada’s dilettante Prime Minister respond?

By proposing a big increase in the capital gains tax.

I’m not joking. Even though Canada already has a punitive capital gains tax, Justin Trudeau wants a big increase.

Here are some excerpts from a report in the National Post by Olivia Rumbell, which focuses on how the higher tax is prodding some people to sell homes before the tax is implemented.

The new capital gains tax proposed in the Liberal budget has led to speculation that there might be a flood of cottages entering the market or a push for earlier closing dates as sellers try to avoid a hefty tax bill. “I am seeing an increase in people wanting to list their properties now that this is going into effect,” said Beth Groom, a broker and owner of Cape Breton Realty. The capital gains tax, if it comes into effect, would tax profits on capital gains of more than $250,000 at almost 67 per cent, up from the prior rate of 50 per cent. It would result in an increased tax bill on capital gains for some sellers. …Groom speculated that if she was working for the buyer, she’d put in an offer for a certain amount, closing prior to the June 25 date when the capital gains tax will come into effect, communicating clearly so that the seller knows if they close before that day, they may save money.

For what it’s worth, I’m not overly worried about the impact on homeowners (though it’s unfair for them to be hit by an extra layer of tax).

What matters a lot for long-run prosperity is innovation and business investment. And Trudeau’s class-warfare grab for money is going to discourage those things.

Given the Tax Foundation’s comprehensive formula, I don’t know what it will do to the overall tax rate on capital income, but it definitely will move in the wrong direction.

Why is Trudeau pushing bad policy?

Given that a previous class-warfare tax hike backfired, he should have learned.

But given his approach to fiscal policy, we shouldn’t be surprised.

P.S. His views on monetary policy may be even worse.

Trudeau's government calls for euthanasia program to 'treat' children with naysaying parents

March 1, 2023 By Olivia Murray

Treat human life as anything less than sacred, and humanity is rapidly dehumanized. Canada's MAiD, like all medical homicide programs, is the metaphorical foot in the door, an obstinate wedge, breaking the seal of a once-closed divider.  Or we call it what it is (genocide), and MAiD is like an axe-wielding Jack Nicholson in The Shining. For context, in 2016, the year "assisted suicide" became legal, the number of MAiD deaths was 1,018.  Five years later, the 2021 data showed that number at 10,064.  This is a rounded 889% increase.  (This datum hails from a government report on the program, which can be accessed here.)  But there was also something else that stood out about the 2021 tally, entirely unsettling: it was the first year that MAiD executioners were legally permitted to kill those whose death was not likely to occur in the "foreseeable" future.  They label this group as "non-RFND."  In 2021, those deaths accounted for 2.2% of the total number. Two days ago, Harbingers Daily published a report by David Fiorazo, which opened with this passage:..............To Read More....

Trudeau's government calls for euthanasia program to 'treat' children with naysaying parents

March 1, 2023 By Olivia Murray

Treat human life as anything less than sacred, and humanity is rapidly dehumanized. Canada's MAiD, like all medical homicide programs, is the metaphorical foot in the door, an obstinate wedge, breaking the seal of a once-closed divider.  Or we call it what it is (genocide), and MAiD is like an axe-wielding Jack Nicholson in The Shining. For context, in 2016, the year "assisted suicide" became legal, the number of MAiD deaths was 1,018.  Five years later, the 2021 data showed that number at 10,064.  This is a rounded 889% increase.  (This datum hails from a government report on the program, which can be accessed here.)  But there was also something else that stood out about the 2021 tally, entirely unsettling: it was the first year that MAiD executioners were legally permitted to kill those whose death was not likely to occur in the "foreseeable" future.  They label this group as "non-RFND."  In 2021, those deaths accounted for 2.2% of the total number. Two days ago, Harbingers Daily published a report by David Fiorazo, which opened with this passage:..............To Read More....

 

Daniel Greenfield Unleashed

China Backed Trudeau“The Liberal Party of Canada is becoming the only party that the PRC can support.” - It figures that a politician who tried to pull off his own Tiananmen Square would have backing from Beijing. This is not a conspiracy theory, it’s the kind of evidence that Democrats often claimed that they had involving Trump and Russia, but didn’t, and that actually exists and was being kept top secret involving Trudeau and China. The full extent of the Chinese interference operation is laid bare in both secret and top-secret Canadian Security Intelligence Service documents…How explicit are we talking here?

Ben Crump to Sue Everyone Except Nation of Islam for Killing Malcolm X "Why are they threatening your life?"-  Ben Crump is running out of dead criminals to sue cities over. After briefly trying to shake down Sesame Street (for shame), Crump is getting in his time machine and suing everyone else over the death of Malcolm X...........Since black nationalists continue to blame the CIA or James Bond for killing Malcolm X, instead of their own, let’s recap. The Nation of Islam has a long history of critics and dissenters being killed................

After Wife and Congress Went There, Biden Visits Ukraine - The media is myth making again...........A parade of world leaders had already visited Ukraine Ex-UK PM Boris Johnson went three times. French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi arrived in Kyiv came last June. Others included Canada’s Justin Trudeau and the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen.  Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell and even Jill Biden all made “secret” visits already........

A National Divorce Isn’t Happening, It's like asking a mugger to stop beating you and split the contents of your wallet - The idea of a national divorce is gaining currency among some on the right. The appeal is as obvious as it is completely unrealistic. Getting a national divorce from the Left is like asking a mugger to stop beating you and just agree to split the contents of your wallet. It’s appeasement from a position of weakness and that never works.  The Left isn’t into compromise. It wants total victory and it holds most of the good cards. It didn’t get into this to settle for New York and California, or for that matter America. Making any kind of deal with it is a delusion and entirely unfeasible. The national division isn’t between red and blue states, but between urban and some suburban areas, and everything else. A national divorce between urban and rural areas would only be workable as some sort of libertarian fever dream in which both sides form federations and sign complex treaties..........

Biden Administration Funds Anti-Netanyahu Protest Group -  Even while Israeli children were being murdered by terrorists, the only thing the media wanted to talk about were the leftist protests against the new Israeli government’s democratic judicial reforms. And the Biden administration has joined this campaign attacking the move. Israel’s new conservative government under Prime Minister Netanyahu has finally initiated the long overdue process of restoring democratic checks and balances by limiting the unlimited power of Israel’s Supreme Court. And the Left has threatened everything up to civil war to protect its illegitimate power while its angry protests have been spun as grassroots opposition. What none of the news reports, editorials, public letters by prominent figures or statements by officials have revealed is that the Biden administration is funding the group behind the protests.........

 

Biden, Trudeau and AMLO Release the “Declaration of North America” – Prepare your Affairs Accordingly

January 11, 2023 | Sundance | 142 Comments ...............This Appeared Here

Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau and Lopez-Obrador released an action outline called the “Declaration of North America.” The DNA is a declaration centered around six pillars: 

1) diversity, equity, and inclusion; 

2) climate change and the environment; 

3) competitiveness; 

4) migration and development; 

5) health; and 

6) regional security. 

The action-oriented outline provides the roadmap for the ideological intentions of the three governments. I would strongly urge everyone to review the declaration [READ HERE], because just like a 5-year financial plan, every family should first know the scale of the chaos they are going to encounter in order to make plans to secure their life.

Declaration of North America (DNA)

January 10, 2023 White House Briefing Room  Statements and Releases

Today, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, President Joseph R. Biden, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met in Mexico City for the 10th North American Leaders’ Summit (NALS). The leaders are determined to fortify our region’s security, prosperity, sustainability and inclusiveness through commitments across six pillars: 1) diversity, equity, and inclusion; 2) climate change and the environment; 3) competitiveness; 4) migration and development; 5) health; and 6) regional security.

North America shares a unique history and culture that emphasizes innovation, equitable development, and mutually beneficial trade to create inclusive economic opportunities for the benefit of our people. We are not just neighbors and partners. Our people share bonds of family and friendship and value – above all else – freedom, justice, human rights, equality, and democracy. This is the North American DNA.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is foundational to the strength, vibrancy, and resilience of our countries. We focus on providing marginalized communities opportunities for their full, equal, and meaningful participation in our democracies and economies. To advance these objectives, President López Obrador, President Biden, and Prime Minister Trudeau reiterated their joint commitment to protect civil rights, promote racial justice, expand protections for LGBTQI+ individuals and deliver more equitable outcomes to all.

In partnership with Indigenous Peoples, we will promote innovative and sustainable solutions that honor traditional knowledge, foster Indigenous-led growth and drive job creation. We will continue our cooperation to build societies where Indigenous women and girls can live, learn, and lead without fear through the Trilateral Working Group on Violence Against Indigenous Women and Girls. Indigenous women from all three countries will convene in the coming weeks to facilitate discussions about priorities and best practices including in areas of political, economic, and social development. The three countries also reaffirm our commitment to gender equality and empowerment of women and girls, in all their diversity by aiming to improve financial and political support for women’s and girl’s rights.

Climate Change and Environment

Mexico, the United States, and Canada recognize the critical nature of taking rapid and coordinated measures to tackle the climate crisis and respond to its consequences. This includes achieving our respective 2030 nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement, and working together and with other countries to keep a 1.5-degree C temperature limit within reach. To promote buy-in for ambitious cuts to emissions, we will come together to align approaches on estimating the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions.

We will continue to implement and build on commitments from the 2021 North American Leaders’ Summit on climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience, while renewing our focus on reducing methane emissions from all sources, with a new focus on waste methane. We will explore standards to develop hydrogen as a regional source of clean energy. We will move swiftly to accelerate the energy transition by deploying clean energy solutions, increasing the production and adoption of zero-emission vehicles in North America and transitioning to cleaner fuels. In partnership with Indigenous Peoples, we reiterate our pledge to protect biodiversity, to work toward ending deforestation, and doing our part to conserve 30 percent of the world’s land and waters by 2030.

Competitiveness

We seek to deepen our regional capacity to attract high quality investment, spur innovation, and strengthen the resilience of our economies, recognizing the benefits brought by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. To boost regional competitiveness, the three countries will seek to forge stronger regional supply chains, as well as promote targeted investment, in key industries of the future such as semiconductors and electric vehicle batteries, which will be critical to advance electric vehicle development and infrastructure. We will convene public-private dialogues and map out supply chains to address common challenges and opportunities.

Critical minerals are an essential component to accelerating North America’s clean energy transition. Each country will review and map out existing and potential reserves of critical mineral resources in the region, while taking care of the environment, respecting local communities, and adhering to high ethical standards.

To support innovation, job creation, and workforce development, the three governments commit to working with the private sector, civil society, labor and academia across North America to foster high-tech entrepreneurship, promote small and medium-sized enterprises, and strengthen technical education. We will also consider trilateral approaches to promote sustainable, inclusive jobs and develop the workforce to meet our climate commitments.

Migration and Development

Today marks the six-month anniversary of the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, a bold new framework for regional responsibility-sharing that 21 leaders endorsed on the margins of the Ninth Summit of the Americas. The three countries of North America each made ambitious commitments under the Los Angeles Declaration, including working together to advance labor mobility in North America, particularly regarding regular pathways, and have been delivering on these commitments.

Since June, Mexico, the United States and Canada have collectively welcomed record numbers of migrants and refugees from the Western Hemisphere under new and expanded labor and humanitarian programs. Today, we affirm our joint commitment to safe, orderly, and humane migration under the Los Angeles Declaration and other relevant multilateral frameworks. This includes assisting host communities and promoting migrant and refugee integration; providing protection to refugees, asylum seekers, and vulnerable migrants; strengthening asylum capacity in the region; expanding and promoting regular pathways for migration and protection; addressing the root causes and impacts of irregular migration and forced displacement; and collaborating to counter xenophobia and discrimination against migrants and refugees.

Now more than ever, we need to identify and address the root causes of irregular migration and forced displacement. Mexico, the United States, and Canada commit to supporting countries across the Western Hemisphere to create the conditions to improve quality of life, especially in marginalized communities that are vulnerable to both forced internal and regional migration and displacement. To that end, we will continue to work together and with our respective private sectors to promote responsible business practices, implement obligations under the USMCA and international labor conventions, and cooperate to eradicate the use of forced and child labor in our supply chains.

Health

Trilateral health cooperation will focus on launching an updated North American Plan for Animal and Pandemic Influenza (NAPAPI) to improve prevention, preparedness, agility, and to provide rapid response to health emergencies in North America. The North American Health Security Working Group will develop and launch a new, revised NAPAPI as a flexible, scalable, and cross-sectoral platform to strengthen regional prevention, preparedness and response to a broader range of health security threats that include influenza and beyond. As we emerge from the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, we also recognize that resilient health systems, including a strong health workforce, are the foundation upon which effective pandemic preparedness and response will be built. We will continue efforts to build stronger and more resilient health systems that meet the broad range of health needs in our countries.

Regional Security

Mexico, the United States, and Canada will focus on strategies to bolster our shared continental security against domestic, regional, and global threats, including cyber threats. Security cooperation will continue to abide by our common understanding that respect for human rights and the rule of law contribute to a more secure North America. Our security cooperation includes actions to disrupt criminal actors and associated crimes across our shared borders, including money laundering, child sexual exploitation, firearms and human trafficking. We also are taking a consistent approach to the collection, use, processing, retention, and protection of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data to strengthen our shared security perimeter and the safety of our citizens, including advocating for the global adoption of standards and recommended practices of the International Civil Aviation Organization on PNR data.

We will continue our North American Drug Dialogue and further advance our cooperative international efforts to address the growing global synthetic drug threat as the United States takes the chair in 2023. We will enhance trilateral work to address the use of precursor chemicals in the production of illegal substances in North America and to disrupt drug trafficking, as well as strengthen public health approaches to prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery.

As both natural and human-induced hazards and disasters increase risks to vulnerable populations, we will continue to work together to share training and best practices to keep our people safe and address emergencies including natural and other disasters. Recognizing the differentiated impact disasters have on women and girls, we aim to integrate a gender perspective in these efforts.

Looking forward

The commitments made during this summit are rooted in a shared vision for a more equitable, just, inclusive, resilient, secure, and prosperous North America and a shared responsibility to achieve more equitable outcomes responsive to the needs and aspirations of our citizens. As we work to implement these commitments in the upcoming year, we seek to model a democratic and sustainable path based on trust to promote inclusive prosperity and security. Mexico, the United States, and Canada look forward to building on this progress at the eleventh NALS (NALS XI), to be hosted by Canada.

The declaration does not need much interpretation to be understood, this is the framework for how the United States, Canada and Mexico see the future of North America. Unfortunately, only a miniscule number of Americans will read the Declaration, and yet it is information like this that tells you the intent of government in our life. As an example, ask the next person you see advocating for Harmeet Dhillon as RNC Chairperson, or Ron DeSantis as a viable 2024 candidate, what the Declaration of North America means and how will Dhillon or DeSantis operate to change the direction of the DNA intent.

I guarantee you not a single person will have any clue what you are talking about, and every single one of them will look at you like a cow just licked them on the forehead. If my assumption is incorrect, I will eat a plain rice cake live on your selected TV show or podcast. CTH will never stop fighting against the totality of the corrupt system, yet it is increasingly frustrating to see decent people maintaining the cycle of abuse from both the Republican and Democrat wing of the UniParty.

(1) We need to get as self-sufficient as possible.

(2) We need a worker’s rebellion, a movement similar in effect to the Solidarity movement.

All cultural and social issues are downstream from the ability of an American to live in a sovereign nation as a sovereign individual.  If we do not have control over our personal economic decisions, we are serfs. Focus discussions with the working-class community; focus on the principles of economics and national stability that comes from economic security.  I am increasingly convinced the working-class is where the solution to this mess is going to come from.

Those who control government, the corporations who pull the strings, know a worker’s strike is risk to their effort and they are doing everything to create systems and processes that would avoid one.  Uncontrolled mass economic migration is a countermeasure to dilute the ability of a worker’s strike to impact political outcomes. They are few, we are still many – but losing ground and need to work with urgency. Instead of trying to plug the dam with fingers and toes, invest in scuba gear for your family.  Once secured, then move upstream to the origination of the inbound flows.

Canada takes giant leap towards Room 101 in the Ministry of Love

August 25, 2022 By Olivia Murray

In the climax of Orwell’s magnum opus, the reader is introduced to Room 101 in the Ministry of Love. It is the subterranean torture chamber where agents of the Party inflict gruesome and macabre punishment upon recalcitrant citizens like Winston. And, now, it appears that Canada is making moves to emulate the totalitarian regime of Oceania and its Party.

In a report released by The Counter Signal, Justin Trudeau and his political allies are paving the way for a militarized climate force — leaked architectural blueprints of a massive new facility lay bare a dystopian future.........To Read More....

 

Court Documents Reveal Canada’s Travel Ban Had No Scientific Basis

In the days leading up to the mandate, transportation officials were frantically looking for a rationale for it. They came up short. 

Rupa Subramanya August 2, 2022

On August 13, 2021, the Canadian government announced that anyone who hadn’t been vaccinated against Covid would soon be barred from planes and trains. In many cases, The Backward could no longer travel between provinces or leave the country. If you lived in Winnipeg and wanted to visit your mother on her deathbed in London or Hong Kong or, perhaps, Quebec City, you’d better get jabbed—or resign yourself to never seeing your mother again............But recently released court documents—which capture the decision-making behind the travel mandate—indicate that, far from following the science, the prime minister and his Cabinet were focused on politics..........“its policies are based on spite, divisiveness, and pure politics. COVID now serves as an excuse to punish the government’s ideological enemies.”.............To Read More.....

My Take - This was sent to my by one of my correspondents with these comments from Canadian readers of the article:

What should frighten people today, isn't the authoritarian governments of China and Russia, but the authoritarians in our midst. It is terrifying that such a retrograde philosophy has taken root amongst so many western leaders...including among the Democrats in the US. 

They know these policies (like the travel ban in Canada) will have no discernible effect, but that isn't the point. The point is control...do what we say you little plebs or we will crush you. 

This is only possible because of a largely compliant media...which is why I am so thankful for places like Common Sense which give alternative (non-government) narratives a voice. 

This article proves once more that Trudeau never follows the science; he follows the polling. When polling recommends "sunny ways," he delivers sunny ways; when it recommends cruelly turning the government's powers against the political thorns in his side, he is just as pleased to do that. Pure malignancy. (To be fair, Erin O'Toole and Jason Kenny were scarcely better - but at least they paid the price for their betrayal of the public.)

The pandemic response was never about public health. From day one, the politicians did everything contrary to established public health practices. They  redefined and rewrote everything on the fly, expecting a passive and uninquisitive public not to notice. And they have largely succeeded in bamboozling the public, so far. But the tide is slowly turning as the vaxx-injured and dead pile up. (Leading cause of death in Alberta in 2021: "unknown.") This will not end well.

The leading cause of death in 2021 in Alberta is "unknown"!  If that's true it's shocking, and I'm inclined to think it is true as "unknown" is killing a lot of young and health people all over the U.S., including doctors who have taken the shots and dropped dead for no describable reason right after being injected.

Justin Trudeau’s ‘Sting of Spite’ Against Political Prisoner Pastor Artur Pawlowski

Meanwhile, call the refusal of Canadian authorities to grant him bail what it is: the powerful ‘Sting of Spite’ meted out by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

By Judi McLeod ——Bio and Archives--March 23, 2022 

Every single day that Canadian Pastor Artur Pawlowski remains in jail without bail is proof positive that the ‘Sting of Spite’ is the main motivation driving Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s overriding jealousy of the Canadian truckers who brought world attention to COVID mandates.  For the high crime of holding a prayer service for the truckers’ Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, Pastor Artur Pawlowski is now being held in solitary confinement at the Calgary Remand Center, locked away from worried sick loved ones............To Read More....

  See the Ketanji Brown Jackson story log.

The Gathering Storm in the West

by Victor Davis Hanson February 22, 2022 Ohio Star Staff

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

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

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

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

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

The North American public has endured almost daily nonsensical changes in “follow the science” state edicts, as well as vast asymmetries between those who profited and those who were hurt by the government reactions to the pandemic. On the one hand, Trudeau threatens to use his state powers to ruin financially the protestors and their supporters. On the other hand, the prime minister brags that he participated in the Canadian versions of the BLM protests in summer 2020. Here in the United States, the combined BLM/antifa riots of summer 2020 caused the greatest property damage claims of any riot in U.S. history, around $2 billion. The violence eventually led to over 35 deaths, the torching of a federal courthouse, police precinct, and historic Washington D.C. church, over 1,500 police injuries–and, mysteriously, very few indictments of the some 14,000 people arrested. Is Trudeau’s point to stress that destroying things make protestors more authentically left-wing and thus exempt, while mostly peaceful protests lose deterrence and therefore can be crushed?

The North American Left justifies such asymmetry both in crude terms and in ideological gobbledly-gook. A Trudeau official called the truckers “Trump supporters,” as if that label has any relevance other than to justify the government’s violation of civil liberties. Does Trudeau think a “Trump supporter” necessarily polls worse than a “Trudeau supporter”? The foppish man who in his youth thought it cool to be photographed sporting blackface is quick to demonize a multiethnic and multiracial protest as “racist”?

Left-wing administrations in Toronto and Washington feel that the supposed higher social goals of the antifa and BLM violent protests (that purportedly advance their own political agendas) warrant exemptions of every sort. More than 1,000 U.S. healthcare workers went on record in 2020 justifying street protestors’ flagrant violations of strict COVID-19 lockdowns, at the height of the pre-vaccination pandemic.

We were lectured that curbing any BLM protest might cause mental health problems. Should noncomplying truckers and their boosters try that ruse?

The asymmetric application of punishment depends solely on the degree to which any given violation aids or detracts from left-wing agendas. A postelection Time magazine piece by Molly Ball gave the game away. She bragged how CEOs and plutocrats conspired to modulate the pulse of the Antifa/BLM violence to ensure calm for Joe Biden’s election—and more or less summed up the larger progressive elite impulse (“There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans.”)

COVID accentuated a larger and growing cultural, political, social, and economic split in the West. Partly, the fissures were brought on by the displacements of globalization. Partly they appeared with the final dominance of a huge class of credentialed government apparatchiks. And partly the split derives from the paradox of governments inviting millions of non-Western immigrants into Europe and North America from impoverished, and dystopian societies. Their inequality upon arrival, supposedly predicated on race rather than class, then becomes political nourishment for progressive redistributive agendas that otherwise had little political support among their citizen populations.

Again, the truckers symbolize this gap, in an age when elites do not care much for class divides, only racial distinctions as a way of demonizing the less well-off.

After all, those who smear the truckers are mostly of the zoom and laptop class. Their chief agendas during the last two years of crisis were sheltering in place to avoid contact with anyone, while zooming and skyping to maintain and boost their already generous incomes. Few like Trudeau ever wondered how the elite remained fully employed, but rarely present at work—much less why millions of others were expected to scoff at the virus and come physically to work, while their incomes often dived or ended due to government lockdown policies.

The muscular classes enjoyed no such exemptions. Their kids went to public schools that were shut down or required masks. Parents lost incomes as they stayed home to watch children that tenured teachers would not teach. Truckers had no such margin of safety or security, but were out among the public delivering food, fuel, clothing, and the appurtenances of the Western comfortable lifestyle. In our current inflationary spiral, they earned a bit more, while inflation made them poorer, while those they served earned far more.

The truckers remind Western audiences that modern progressivism equates muscular labor and hourly wage compensation with a sort of Neanderthalism. That is, the unfortunate clingers supposedly never quite understood globalization, much less how an 8-billion-person market rewards those who type on keyboards and, in relative terms, punishes the supposedly less aware who physically deliver, fix, make, and repair things.

We can almost reduce the divide to the embarrassing optics of a pouty-face pajama-boy prime minister, with a pompadour coiffure, issuing threats to calm, but beefy and calloused workers. Each time Trudeau speaks to his nation, the visual message is that any of the truckers could do a better job than he in both setting and explaining policy, while he would become a helpless weeping child if placed behind the wheel of a big rig.

Somehow the elite class extrapolates moral worth from its rigged superiority in financial compensation. And given its economic and cultural leverage—social media, entertainment, academia, professional sports, the corporate boardroom, Wall Street—it has institutionalized the idea that, in circular fashion, the more the credentialed and better compensated, the more the elite deserve even more influence on how societies should run in a manner that mostly benefits themselves.

Paradoxes arise constantly. Government grandees are caught without masks at tony restaurants. Climate change demagogues fly private jets. Pro-teacher union, anti-charter and anti-home school zealots ensure their children stay in private schools. The gated estate crowd ridicule the fossilized idea of a border wall. Professional bureaucrats routinely lie under oath to Congress and to federal investigators without any consequences whatsoever—as John Brennan, James Clapper, Anthony Fauci, and Andrew McCabe can attest.

To explain California Governor Gavin Newsom sporting about without a mask at elite gatherings, we are supposed to assume that his class deserves exemption from the ramifications of its ideology—in order to travel faster, sleep better, have a larger support network, and relax in deservedly larger homes and gardens—all so that they could better save us chumps and clueless dregs from ourselves.

Our elites like Trudeau and Newsom seem angry they are unfairly underappreciated by their clueless beneficiaries. The latter supposedly never appreciate the needed remedies for climate change, the thought cleansing required to eliminate systemic racism, and the mind reprogramming demanded for true diversity, equity, and inclusion thinking.

Instead, the losers cling to unwoke and incorrect notions that class, not race, remains the real postmodern divide, that printing money does not make us richer, that a nation without a border is an amorphous nothing, that affordable gasoline and diesel fuel (not wind and solar) for now keep the West alive, that a fetus is alive at conception, that biology largely determines gender, that assimilation and integration are the only cures for tribalism, and that the law reflects a natural innate morality, and should not be applied on the basis of perceived victims manipulated by it, or the supposed victimizers manipulating it.

That wound of an imperious but counterfeit elite has suppurated too long beneath a smooth scab. And abruptly, the truckers at least tore some of it off.

What is now following is amplification and clarification of the Western divide. We the public are at the global theater. And we are watching a tragicomedy. On stage, a petulant cast of clueless Justin Trudeaus and bumbling Joe Bidens simply cannot fathom why few anymore are listening to them. More and more North Americans are perplexed why anyone would wish to follow such unimpressive mental and physical figures along with all the toxic hypocrisies they embody and weaponize.

– – –

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author most recently of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump and the newly released The Dying Citizen.
Photo “Justin Trudeau” by Justin Trudeau.