Category: Featured Comment

The Bad Argument Contest Winner Is….

While John Ivison starts out with a sensible premise, that the Trudeau liberals are sending the Canadian economy off the rails, he can’t seem to resist sending his own op-ed off the rails by attempting to associate a discredited Keynesian nostrum with libertarian Argentinian President Javier Milei.

At the same time, Milei’s invocation of the animal spirits of wealth creation is all but absent from the collectivist capitalism pushed by Freeland and Justin Trudeau.

It gets even worse when Ivison blames the 2008 financial collapse not on inept monetary policy driven by a failing fiat currency system but rather on the leftist boogeyman of “deregulation”.

What about the crash of 2008, which was the product of too little regulation, rather than too much?

Does Anyone Named Trudeau Have Even the Slightest Bit of Ethics?

In an earlier thread, SDA regular ‘PaulHarveyPageTwo’ shared the following comment:

“Alexandre Trudeau can’t believe anyone cares about Chinese interference.”

“The only donation agreement Alexandre Trudeau ever signed for the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation in his 20 years there (for $200,000) is now at the centre of an ethics probe. He doesn’t consider it suspicious.”

“It doesn’t seal the case, but it’s quite the coincidence.”

Trudeau is French for Trust Me!

I wonder if Alexander offers Chinese billionaires access to “the big guy”?

h/t James MacMaster

Featured Comment

In response to this post, Gerry K. shared some profound thoughts:

Neil’s message of the tragic failed attempt of an at sea rescue and the courage of men in the midst of it, did bring a tear to my eye.. I agree with him that all our “leaders” have failed us, and that they do not care one iota about us or our trials throughout our lives, that they only care for their selves and how they can advance their own well being and wealth, even if that requires them to sacrifice us to obtain that advancement. The issue is not, that many are aware of this deliberate damage being done to humanity, it is that, not enough who do wake up can accept this reality, because it would mean that they were deliberately deceived and that they were gullible enough to to believe the deceit. This would be an attack on their core belief system. They cannot allow the reality to change their world view, so they prefer the comfort of the lies, even as they are led to enslavement by it.

The issue then, is how do we reach these people who deny the real truth to preserve the comfort of their own sanity?
I don’t have the answer, I don’t think anyone does. However, if we don’t continue to seek that answer, if we just surrender, the WEF cohort will win, and they are getting close to achieving those goals.

There are times I think that SDA has helped to preserve my sanity on a number of occasions, so thanks to Kate, and the SDA contributors for that. 2023 and beyond will be tough times for all, personally, I don’t plan on going out without a fight, how about you? Wishing all SDA posters blessings for a safe happy Christmas!

Featured Comment

Bill Greenwood has seen a thing or two.

My former brother-in-law was a native fellow, and a stand-out chuckwagon outrider. June of 1973, he flew into Calgary and rented a green Satellite Sebring to get up to the (now defunct) Rimbey Stampede to line up his rides for the Calgary Stampede. It was a rainy weekend that year.

During the course of the wagon races, Ralph Vigen, IIRC, had an upset. One of his horses spooked and broke free of the guy handling him in the course of getting things sorted out. He bolted and managed to head right for the parking area, dragging harness and tack behind him. He found a lane in the lot, and found some speed. The lane came to a ‘T’. The horse didn’t skip a beat, and jumped. Cleared the hood of a green Satellite Sebring, but dragged his hooves and all the harness across. They found him munching on the grass in the cemetery.

So, my BIL returns the car at the rental place on Sunday afternoon, and the guy behind the counter ain’t buying the story that this Indian’s telling him about a runaway chuckwagon horse. Rimbey being pretty close to Hobbema and all. Luckily, he had the business card of the Rimbey RCMP detachment head, and the Mountie verified the story over the phone. 🙂

Featured Comment

SDA is blessed to have several brilliant, insightful people reading and commenting.  One of them is Bob Daye.  To the previous post he wrote this:

Whenever I hear “the science”, I know bullshit is next.

Not once did I hear any media advise the public via PSA’s about upping their Vitamin D, which is very effective at preventing the flu.

They never questioned the policies, lock downs, distancing, masks, nothing; they just cheerlead the unscientific nonsense coming out of the public health and screamed “cases cases cases deaths deaths deaths” constantly – willing partners in the fraud.

Public health bureaucrats who ordered this draconian reaction and the premiers who signed off on it right up to the PM sock puppet need to be held accountable. They need to be fired and arrested, including the cheerleaders in the media fortifying the lying politicians.

What we have essentially witnessed was/is our governments at war with the people and it’s not over. They want to destroy our energy and our farms. They will be denying the privilege of private vehicle ownership. There never was any intent to put sufficient infrastructure in for EV vehicles, they will just outlaw new ICE (Internal Combusion Engine) vehicles. They want to force everyone into a 600 square foot shoe box that we rent but can never own. They want us eating their artificial food. The carbon they want to eliminate is us.

WEF is a terrorist organization that has the blessing of our government. The government need to be replaced and the colluding bureaucrats arrested. The WEF needs to be dismantled and tried at Nuremberg 2.0, then hung publicly.

Y2Kyoto: State Of Anorexia Envirosa

From reader “DN”, on today’s earlier post on spiking ammonia prices;

The lower a product is in the Jenga tower of the modern economy, the more disastrous it is when you screw with it. Hydrocarbons are at the root of absolutely everything. Leftists are trying to replace the entire basis of the modern industrial economy, and they’re trying to do it in a way that has never happened in all of human history. Coal didn’t replace wood, it supplemented it. Oil didn’t replace coal, it supplemented it. Nuclear didn’t replace oil, it supplemented it. Each step involving exploitation of a more energy-dense fuel source didn’t replace the previous source, it merely reduced reliance upon it. People still burn wood and coal, we’re just burning less of it, and allowing it to be used for other things instead of keeping us alive and warm. Humanity will never stop using hydrocarbons; even if we were to replace every oil-fired power plant and vehicle with nuclear/electric, we’ll just redirect the hydrocarbons to places where they’re more profitably used, like fertilizer and plastic.

The one thing that we will never be able to do is “leave it in the ground”. That’s not how a modern industrial economy works. So what the progs are really trying to do is destroy the modern industrial economy – and with it, about 7/8ths of the population of the planet. They are advocating nothing less than deliberate genocide in the service of their Gaia-worshipping death cult. Anyone who knows the basics of science and can perform simple arithmetic understands this. Their ultimate goal is to outdo Hitler, Stalin and Mao combined, by a couple of orders of magnitude.

The funny part is that they think they’ll be the last ones left alive. I wouldn’t bet on that; people facing starvation tend not to go gentle into that good night.

Featured Comment

Trudeau has inadvertently performed a great service, but at a cost to some brave Canadian patriots, who were beaten, had their property seized and some lost their jobs. Their persecution will continue as the evil, leftist Canadians, full of self-righteous anger will continue to harass them.

His great service, to prove beyond a shadow of doubt, that the Left (across the West) are evil, tyrants, dictators at their core. They will suspend rights, if given the chance, seize funds, beat and imprison and declare anyone who disagrees “a terrorist” and “white supremacist/racist/homophobe/….”.

Never let a crisis go to waste, except Comrade Fidel Jr,. (immersed in the liberal-CBC cocoon) overshot the mark, and went nuclear, . . . well, because he could.

While the state media/allied corporate media will repeat their lies, censor the news and endlessly repeat narratives that inflame racial tensions, divide populations and focus on groups to blame and destroy.
Fidel Jr did, what every leftist dreams they could do: seize wealth, beat, imprison and intimidate every person who opposes them. Only concentration camps remain as the last step.

Even better, every big liberal voice of reason (across the Western nations), protector of our rights, were quiet as a church mouse. Dictatorship is fine!

Now, we can rhetorically beat every single Democrat and Liberal as just another Trudeau.

h/t standfast24

“In Canada, we don’t have freedom: we have freedom, but’.”

A followup essay from reader Chris. The Cost of Freedom and the Weight of Fear (pdf)

People often talk about the cost of freedom, but we usually talk about it as if buying freedom was a one-time deal, and that it’s a price that has already been paid in full by our forebears.

The price of the freedom we enjoy in the west has been paid in blood many times over, in places like Crecy, Lexington, Concord, Gettysburg, Vimy Ridge, and on the beaches of Normandy, and Okinawa.

But freedom isn’t a done deal. It isn’t something you can pay for once, and then have forever. It’s a dynamic and delicate thing that must be constantly and vigilantly protected.

For Justin Trudeau, and those who think like him, the whole question of liberty in Canada was settled long ago. Canadians have their freedoms, and the people who are disrupting life in Ottawa are not only deluded, but dangerous.

In Canada, politicians of all stripes have a long history of watering down absolutes in the fruitless pursuit of an illusory middle ground. There is no principal that can’t be compromised in the name of being “balanced”. As a result, in Canada, we don’t have freedom: we have “freedom, but”. We have freedom of speech, but not speech that is determined to be hateful. We have freedom of assembly, but not if it threatens commerce. We have freedom of worship – so long as it’s in accordance with public health. We have freedom of mobility, except if we’re unvaccinated. We have freedom of assembly, but the police will come to your door if they think that you might be supporting the Freedom Convoy truckers.

We have the right to liberty, security of the person, and bodily autonomy, unless the national, provincial, or regional Chief Medical Officer of Health declares a public health emergency, in which case you may face arrest for non-compliance if you contravene an emergency health order.

That is why these protests are happening.

Featured Comment

SDA is blessed to have some exceptionally intelligent, extremely insightful readers and commenters. Here’s one brilliant example from ‘DrD‘, only lightly edited/formatted for clarity.

The protests really boil down to demonstrating the divide in Canada between the makers vs. the takers, the producers vs. the parasites. For far too long the parasites have been getting away with murder, figuratively and, on occasion literally, and the politicians have been pandering to them whether it be at Caledonia, at the BLM protests, at the pipeline blockades or whatever “green” nonsense of the day the professional malcontents have dreamt up. Finally, the makers/producers have had enough and, as Kate pointed out recently, started to use the tactics of the parasites to poke a finger into the faces of the politicos.

Now, the politicos and their laptop industry cheerleaders are pissed. Too damn bad. You wanted to block the roads and the trucks and the pipeline workers and just assumed that those guys and gals with the dirt under their fingernails would work all the harder to get around you and get you all of those creature comforts you and your fellow parasites take for granted while you further your pet “woke” causes. Well guess what? Now those same truckers have blocked themselves and everything else that moves along those roads.  You’re starting to panic because the impact is real:

  • Not a bunch of hyperventilated headlines in a rag no one believes anymore, if they even read it.
  • Not a bunch of students having to work from home.
  • Not people having to use an alternate Starbucks for their morning coffee but real impacts:
    • Like people not getting the materials they need to keep working.
    • Potentially not getting the food to the grocery stores.
    • Not getting the packages they ordered online last week.

It’s become blindingly clear to everyone who really makes this country run:

  • Not self important journalists spewing a load of BS no one in the know believes.
  • Not bloviating politicians telling everyone else how to live their lives.
  • Not “activists” throwing a wrench into every piece of the social machinery they can think of.
  • Not air-headed academics teaching grievance studies 101

But truckers who deliver things and workers who make things and produce things. It’s becoming so painfully obvious who makes this country work that the parasites are $#!%%ing themselves because they realize that with each passing day that simple truth is becoming more and more obvious to everyone. By contrast, the naked emperor-parasites are looking ever more ridiculous. The jig’s up. And it’s about time.

Photoblogging

SDA regular Denise has been out & about and has kindly shared some photos and personal commentary for us all.

These photos could have been taken at any of the thousands of overpasses that cross our nation’s highways as the Freedom Convoy traveled to Ottawa last week. Peaceful flag-waving Canadians. A festive (if freezing) atmosphere. Impromptu, spontaneous gatherings of happy, hopeful people of all ages. Kids seemingly impervious to the cold as they rolled down snowy hills. People laughing and cheering. It was beautiful. As one friend said, “People are starting to come out of the fog.” Will it last?

The complicit media is doing its best to denigrate and destroy this amazing show of strength from normal, hardworking citizens. They’re sowing the seeds for the government spin that these courageous protesters are vile; their legitimate concerns are “unacceptable”; their calls for freedom are “hate rhetoric.” It’s time to remind the Freedom Convoy how incredibly inspirational they are. As one homemade sign read: “Trudeau divided us in 6 years. Truckers united us in 2 weeks.”

The Freedom Convoy was the reason that thousands across Canada stood in freezing weather for hours. It was wonderfully uplifting and so much fun to be at the Highway 401-Wellington Road overpass in London, Ontario. The hundreds gathered were unapologetically proud Canadians and enthusiastically showed their support for each truck that passed (admittedly, a bit more so for the Budweiser truck). There were signs – Mel Gibson as Braveheart inscribed with “Freedom”, “Truth Not Fear”, “No Vax Mandate” – and more Canadian flags than I’ve ever seen in one place. With my large “Lest We Forget” Remembrance Day flag, I thought about my dad. In 1945 on that day – January 27th – he was a hungry, cold prisoner of war on a forced march from Poland to Berlin. A proud Canadian always, he treasured freedom.

Here are a few vignettes from that memorable day of real, decent people – not the slandered “fringe minority” – who support the Freedom Convoy:

  • The friendly, kind woman who helped hold my flag in high winds. Until recently, she said, she couldn’t have imagined attending a public protest. What changed? She hadn’t worked since October because she chose not to get vaccinated. What she missed most were the residents in the retirement home: “we’re their family and they’re ours.” And she missed singing: “In the dining room I was known as the singing server.” I have no doubt that this special woman had brightened the lives of many people in their final years.
  • The guy who looked like he knew how to work hard and how to have fun. He was cheering, waving the Canadian flag, and celebrating each truck’s honking horn. Then he turned, saw my Lest We Forget flag, and started to cry. As he wept, he said, “That should be the biggest flag here. Those guys died for our freedom.” A woman who said she was his sister smiled and took it in stride: “Our dad was a veteran. He’s really sentimental about those guys,” she said with a gentle laugh.
  • On my way home seeing a lone man in a farm field by the 401 holding a homemade sign over his head that read “Heroes”. He stood motionless and determined for as long as I could see.
  • Stopping on a rural 401 overpass where an elderly couple stood with a Canadian flag and a “Thank You” sign. I mentioned that there was a much larger crowd at the overpass a few miles to the west; they said they wanted truckers to see support in as many places as possible so chose this quiet spot. Earlier in the day they’d seen the large gatherings at the overpasses at Wellington & Highbury Roads when they dropped off 50 lunches for truckers at The Flying J Travel Centre, a meeting point for the Southwestern Ontario branch of the Convoy.

These are the people I trust. These are the people who support the Freedom Convoy. Please don’t let the worst among us rewrite history.


Featured Comment

Every day, I am honoured by Kate allowing me to contribute here on SDA. In a similar way, I am honoured that Glenn Reynolds shared one of my recent posts on his popular Instapundit blog. Several of the comments therein were profound. This one, in particular, by Conrad O’Connor, hit several chords:

Trudeau’s response makes perfect sense. He cannot afford to have an honest debate about the costs of Covid theater or the merits of vaccine mandates, Such a debate might reveal that accumulating evidence shows that lockdowns did far more damage than benefit, and there is no evidence the unvaccinated pose a threat to the vaccinated. This would threaten his power and undermine rule by experts.

So he defaults to the leftwing playbook: The truckers are popular and working class so he can’t call them greedy capitalists, but they are mostly white so therefore are clearly racist nazi misogynist Islamophobes. This tells the media how to report the story and tells the politically ignorant that the truckers’ demands can be ignored. It is deeply dishonest to the point of absurdity, but completely in accord with leftwing tactics.

Featured Comment

SDA regular Petter O’Donnell wrote something exceptionally thought provoking last night:

The percentage who might support the convoys may well be fairly low (my guess 20 to 30 per cent) but then another 50 per cent are probably fed up with the mandates but just hope in the abstract that they will go away because “experts” will say they are no longer needed. So that 50 per cent need to be educated about the fact that experts are not likely to lean that way because the other 20 per cent not yet covered in this analysis are those who like this situation and are woke enough to get what it really means, i.e., global socialist revolution (with them in charge, elections from now on are just to be show theatrics designed to ratify what the elites have already decided must be).

How might this convoy event reach that silent and rather undereducated (in the school of reality) 50 per cent? Only by articulating a message they can possibly understand. Chasing Charlie Angus around the back streets of Ottawa is not going to be that message. Neither are angry cries of outrage against Jewish bankers and “all those people” from “over there.”

This is in part because a very considerable portion of the 50 per cent are in fact those people from over there.

There are a few articulate people who might be assets in Ottawa and I hope they find their way to that benighted town and take part. But how exactly can this be structured so that the best possible message emerges? We know the media will twist the words of those they interview, who are bound to be largely flummoxed by the sudden appearance of a camera crew and microphone, and blurt out inner feelings that, while sincere and understandable, will sound like “Grrrr” to most neutrals.

This is why we have political parties. In a normally functioning country, when this disorganized congregation of like-minded people arrived in Ottawa, they would find important, well-known people that they voted for, ready to provide their facilities and expertise, and their credibility which would negate the media mischief, and keep the tasked police agents at a safe distance with nothing to exploit. This is where even the great Trump failed, had he employed the services of sensible advisors and not his son in law etc, he would have been told that Jan 6 was a cluster waiting to happen, and would seriously damage his chances of achieving his stated goal of litigating the fraudulent election.

I don’t know if Pollievre or Bernier read SDA very much, but for the sake of our country and for liberty and all things that are sensible, good and sane, you two and a few others need to get together and shepherd this flock when it is fully assembled, and speak for them. I cannot conceive of O’Toole being of any use here, he should just take a two-week vacation.

This can work. But it can also fail in a miserable and grotesque way too, and no doubt there are those planning just such an outcome. Watch out for them. It might be a good organizing principle to say, anyone who actually lives here should not join in, we can’t trust anyone in this city. I sure wouldn’t.

Safe And Effective ®: Blurring The Lines

A featured comment posted here yesterday, from Natalie Gordon: Are we missing adverse vaccine reactions days 1-14 in Canada, (1-21 in Saskatchewan)?

Re: Covid-19: Stronger warnings are needed to curb socialising after vaccination, say doctors and behavioural scientists [https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n783/rr]

Examining the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Emergency Use Authorization Review Memorandum, note on page 41 Pfizer reports “Two serious cases of suspected but unconfirmed COVID-19 were reported, both in the vaccine group.” Pfizer attributes this to one of three possibilities. “It is possible that this event represented reactogenicity following the second vaccination, a COVID-19 case with false negative test that occurred less than 7 days after completion of the vaccination series, or an unrelated infectious process.”

I am aware of a young woman age 35 who had a previous case of confirmed COVID illness two months before she received her vaccine. Eight hours after her first Pfizer dose she became severely ill with headache, cough, fever, facial swelling and red rash, vomiting, diarrhea, shaking, inability to ambulate without assistance, strange visual and auditory hallucinations, swollen tongue, and dyspnea, which she partially recovered from after another ten hours. She was left with extreme fatigue being unable to get out of bed without assistance and unable to function properly for three more days after she was able to get out of bed. In the midst of her worst illness, her frantic husband contacted the official Government of Manitoba Health Links number. He was informed that her reaction did not fit the description of known reactions to the vaccine and therefore she must have acquired the virus before the vaccine and became symptomatic with COVID after the vaccine. He was advised that they must both self isolate for fourteen days and get a PCR test at the earliest opportunity. He was also advised that he not take her hospital or call an ambulance since she was likely highly infective and would endanger medical personnel and other patients. When she recovered enough to walk, she visited her family doctor who refused to take a report of an adverse reaction because the doctor considered this reaction to be within the normal parameters of vaccine response. Also due to the fact that any illness that occurs between day 1-14 is by government policy classified as COVID, she was included in the provincial statistics are a suspected COVID case in an unvaccinated person.

As a retired Human Geneticist with extensive experience in the epidemiology of genetic variants, I was absolutely appalled by her situation. If the Government of Manitoba is routinely classifying any illness in days 1-14 post vaccination as COVID then many cases of potential adverse vaccine reaction are being missed. Further, many cases of COVID may be adverse vaccine reactions not COVID. The 1-14 day standard is used all over Canada. The next door province of Saskatchewan recently changed their standard from 1-14 days to 1-21 days!

We simply must begin seriously considering if the COVID illnesses we see in days 1-14 in any region with this standard (1-21 in Saskatchewan) is in fact an adverse reaction to the vaccine. Are these adverse reactions are being classified incorrectly as COVID? We also need to know if the PCR tests of those who are being diagnosed as COVID cases during this period are actually detecting spike protein being released into the bloodstream after administration of the vaccine. I worry that our intense fear of causing vaccine hesitancy during a pandemic is also causing us to overlook potential adverse reactions. The multiple anecdotal reports coming from antivaxxer social media where hospital personnel complain ERs full of COVID patients are actually vaccine reactions may have some basis in truth. If this puzzling issue of days 1-14 (1-21 in Saskatchewan) is not resolved we will only increase vaccine hesitancy among antivaxxers because it will appear we are deliberately trying to conceal something.

More: Did you think unvaccinated meant they hadn’t had a vaccine? Think again.

Natalie Gordon’s academic background: I have BSc in Biochemistry a PhD in Human Genetics from the University of Manitoba with my area of speciality being Epidemiology of Genetic Variants of Folate metabolism I did a postdoctoral fellowship in CancerCare Manitoba in innate immunity and infection related preterm delivery in pregnancy. I also did a postdoctoral fellowship in Plants Science in Biostatistics. I am now semi retired but I am still writing and published. You can do a quick search of my peer reviewed publications in Google Scholar.

Featured Comment

SDA regular Peter O’Donnell shared much wisdom yesterday:

Between the radicals of left and right, there is a vast dead zone which I would divide into two roughly equal halves. One of them is faintly conservative and would prefer that our radical philosophies would win out, but they don’t want trouble and are too easily intimidated by liberal social contacts and family etc. The other half are mildly progressive and are willing to remain ignorant as to how the globalists are actually doing what they do, because they want them to succeed no matter what laws are broken or rights are trampled. Hence the puzzling statistic that 70% of U.S. voters think there was fraud in 2020 while (if there was fraud) only 50 to 55% voted for Trump. (if there was not fraud then 30% are correct and 45% voted for Trump).

It is this “go along to get along” mentality that has allowed the globalists to accomplish what amounts to a revolution without firing a shot other than one at Ashli Babbitt and another at Scalise (and his fellow baseball players of that incident). And of those crimes, only one is currently even viewed as criminal.

It should be clear to any rational person that the climate change movement is a thinly disguised effort to overthrow free market economics in favour of directed socialism, in which unproductive alternative energy sources will be heavily subsidized so they can continue to pretend that they actually generate any electricity worth mentioning. So many people out there, however, just want to virtue signal or live in peace and harmony with the idiots down the street and at the other end of their video phone calls, so they pretend not to see any of this and act nervous if anyone does mention it. If our economies slowly fall apart under the dead weight of faulty assumptions then they will go down with the ship, never having tried to avoid hitting the iceberg dead on.

I wonder what Churchill or Maggie Thatcher would have said at Glasgow and specifically to Greta Thunberg. “It’s past your bedtime” might be a start.

Featured Comment

From SDA regular “Canadian Observer”:

A lefty progressive or not, Jimmy Dore is pulling more than his weight in the battle against the Dems and their dishonest establishment/media allies. They have been trying to cancel him as hard as they have any conservative. Here, he brilliantly exposes Facebook’s supposed “factchecker”, PolitiFact, as the lying leftist propagandists are caught red-handed in those lies.

We Are All Treaty People

Via Chris (from the comments);

Your future is being planned by your betters. Your opinions or permission are not being sought and are not welcome. (“When I want your opinion I’ll tell it to you”)

https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/vaughn-palmer-b-c-s-undrip-plan-requires-much-broader-consultation

“The (BC) New Democrats have released the draft of an ambitious plan, setting out 79 goals they hope to fulfil over the next five years to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (that was unanimously passed in 2019).”

“…though the government says the plan is “meant to help everyone who lives in B.C. to understand the importance of reconciliation in B.C.,” the ONLY input sought through the consultations is from First Nations and Indigenous peoples.”

“…the plan, if finalized, “commits the B.C. government to entering into agreements that give Indigenous governing bodies statutory decision-making powers over non-Indigenous people and companies and/or a veto over decision-making by other statutory decision-makers.”

“This is unfortunate……but understandable if the goal is to get the plan finalized and out the door before the rest of the B.C. public notices what is being done in its name.”

He Admires Their Basic Dictatorship

Blacklocks (paywalled) – Gov’t Will Regulate YouTube

The Commons heritage committee has voted to regulate YouTube under federal law. The Department of Heritage said YouTube management, not individual users, will be liable for complying with the Broadcasting Act: “The only reason the government is doing this is to stretch the justification of regulating public airwaves into a justification for regulating private viewing.”

via Robert of Ottawa:

They’ve done this because the head of the CRTC, Ian Scott, CEO, demanded the right to regulate all forms of transmission. Thing is, they can do it when radio spectrum must be controlled as there is a limited supply and to use it requires a large, fixed, transmitter. Not so for Netflix, Youtube, etc. We’ll see how the battle goes. There will be three sides, Netflix/Youtube etc., the governmnet and Canadians.

This coming along with a movement by the government to take their money; but that will probably end up in symbolic payments as long as they do the government’s censoring.

Sounds about right.

Featured Comment

In response to yesterday’s Wagging the Dog posting, SDA contributor, Ann, shared some amazing thoughts. I do hope she’s wrong but fear she is not:

You are correct, Robert. They are, in effect, showing us their power. The majority of the population of the U.S., including a record number of ethnic minorities who broke rank, rejected the elites. We rejected the entertainment industry, the mainstream media, the “wisdom” of academia, and the Swamp of bureaucrats in Washington. We voted for Trump in record numbers. We knew that Trump and his administration stood in the way of this bleak, gray, awful life under overloads who keep all the goodies for themselves. But they are showing us their power. With smiling faces and smooth word salads, they are robbing us of freedom. They are robbing us of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They are denying us the ability to travel, to gather, to enjoy live concerts and live sports in big or small venues, to dine out, to enjoy pubs and bars. Soon they will start denying us the foods and drinks we enjoy. And it won’t end. Our safe suburban neighborhoods are going to be forever altered. Our camping and hunting and recreation and sports are going to be denied us forever.

We won’t get back the pre-Covid times. Those are gone with the wind. Voting is meaningless. They know that we know what they did. They know that we know they cheated. But it doesn’t matter. They have the power. And they will never give it up. They no longer have to pretend to govern according to the will of the people, not when they can just order an extra 100,000 “votes” in the middle of the night to disenfranchise our votes in key districts. Soon even the smiling and “kind” and “benevolent” front they keep presenting will be gone as well. They won’t even need to pretend anymore.

The French Revolution got rid of a king but ended up with the Emperor Napoleon. And Robespierre, the despot who governed before Napoleon, was worse than the aristocrats he replaced. The whip just changed hands.
America gave us common folk middle class people a few good centuries. But it’s over. The aristocrats are letting us know we are back where they always want us: lower class, under their heel, producing things for them, inferior and cringing, doing their will, and no longer free.

It’s sickening.

Featured Comments

From the previous post come two brilliant comments from Jim and CT respectively, both well worth a careful read:

Complacency and submission to faux authority types permitted a wide spread corruption of the organizational infrastructure across the entire spectrum of human activity in western democracies. From education entities to labour entities to corporate entities to political entities to legal entities to the media there was a failure to challenge and to root out the infiltration of Marxist philosophy and doctrine embedding itself in the fabric of activity.

Now, the majority of these complacent and submissive supporters of western democracies find themselves on the outside looking in as a Marxist insurgency roils across the country supported by the various entities named above. These same supporters have no idea of what they can do to oppose the insurgency and no idea of what entities can be persuaded to support and work with them to restore order.

Standing on a precipice and staring into the abyss is where these supporters of western democracies are today. If they fail to figure out that they have to cease their complacency and their submission and if they then fail to move quickly to organize themselves into a formidable infrastructure that is able to counter and challenge the Marxist philosophy and doctrine then the Marxists will win, if not now, at some point in the near future.

Excellent and to the point, Jim. Like so many aspects of society, people are looking inward with a serious lack of skills to determine their future actions. Politically ordinary people have no idea how to organize and make their voices heard. If Trudeau gets his way and his socialist promises are accepted then there will be little hope for Canada.

How people could have been led down a road that totally ignored the communist threat is astounding to me. It is as if the fall of the Berlin Wall brought an end to communist ambitions led by Russia and China. Communism is an ‘international’ effort to raise the downtrodden. It is a fascist theology. Geopolitics is not abstract. It is a very real reality. If your governance cannot produce enough to satisfy the people, you go out and take it from someone else. The communists have incubated their efforts in western media, education, and government workers. Any challenge to what they have achieved will take years and will be bloody. By the time society realizes the true nature of what is going on it will likely be too late.

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