As Canadian Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau pulled out all the stops to quash the trucker protest against
vaccine mandates, without ever having actually listened to their
complaints, a truth emerged, clear as day. Democracy has been an
illusion. That's the conclusion drawn by Canadian journalist Matthew
Ehret in a February 18, 2022, Strategic Culture article.1
"Who would have thought that Canada would ever be a spark plug for a freedom movement against tyranny?" Ehret asks.
"Countless thousands of patriots have driven across
the country to bunker down in Ottawa in peace and high festive spirits
which I had to see with my own eyes to believe demanding something so
simple and un-tainted by ideology: freedom to work, provide for families
and a respect for basic rights as laid out in the Charter of Rights and
Freedoms ...
Mainstream media and political hacks have been
working overtime to paint the Freedom convoy that converged on Ottawa on
January 29 as an 'insurrectionist movement' full of 'white
supremacists,' 'Russian stooges,' and 'Nazis' out to 'overthrow the
government.'
Even the Bank of England's former governor (and World
Economic Forum Trustee) Mark Carney chimed in on February 7 stating
that 'this is sedition' and that 'those who are still helping to extend
this occupation must be identified and punished to the full force of the
law' ...
Faced with an organic civil rights movement of
blue-collar truckers, farmers and tens of thousands of supporters who
have convened on Canada's capital to demand a restoration of their basic
freedoms, the current Liberal government has failed to show even an
ounce of humanity or capacity to negotiate.
This shouldn't be a
surprise for those who have seen the hypocrisy of neo-liberal
'rules-based' order ideologues in action over the past few years who are
quick to celebrate the 'liberty' of citizens of Ukraine, Hong Kong, or
Xinjiang when the outcome benefits the geopolitical aims of detached
technocrats hungry for global hegemony.
The moment genuine self-organized labor movements
arise demanding basic rights be recognized, then the masks come off and
the rage of tyrants show their true faces."
Tyrants Are Showing Their True Colors
As reported by Ehret, the Deep State of Canada is now using the
Emergency Measures Act to do precisely what Carney called for, namely
identify and punish anyone who dares stand up for freedom.
The Act grants extraordinary powers to the banking industry to search
people's social media accounts and private bank records, and to seize
the bank accounts of anyone suspected of supporting the Freedom Convoy,
either in spirit or through online donations, including
cryptocurrencies.
Victims will have no recourse, as the banks have been given full
legal protection from lawsuits by those whose lives they destroy.
Business owners in Canada who support freedom can also have their
insurance policies canceled, and truckers can lose their drivers'
licenses, either temporarily or permanently.
Still, the protesters did not give up. If anything, the threats
appeared to have had the opposite effect. According to Ehret, the
protestors were "renewing their commitments to remain in place," which
they did until Trudeau sent in police2 to arrest protestors and tow their trucks.
While Trudeau remained dictatorial until the truckers had been
cleared from the Parliament area, the political establishment, on the
other hand, showed signs of cracking. Two Liberal Party members, MP Joel
Lightbound and MP Yves Robillard broke with party ranks, calling for an
end to the unpopular and unnecessary COVID measures.3
Then, finally, in a surprise turnabout, Trudeau buckled February 23,
2022, and said he would revoke the Emergencies Act he'd invoked earlier.4
On a global scale, the silence of leaders of democracies and
republics around the world is as informative as Trudeau's power grab. By
now, we would have expected leaders of the U.S., the U.K., France and
any number of others, to have stepped up to the microphone to denounce
the Canadian government's actions.
But they haven't, and that tells you everything you need to know
about where they stand on the issues of democracy and freedom. Worse,
some have vocalized support for Trudeau's dictatorial actions.
In a February 10, 2022, tweet, Juliette Kayyem, former assistant
secretary of Homeland Security under U.S. President Obama and a frequent
CNN commentator, suggested the Canadian regime ought to slash the
truckers' tires, empty their gas tanks, arrest the drivers, move the
trucks, cancel their insurance, suspend their drivers' licenses and
prohibit their recertification in the future. In her own words, "I will
not run out of ways to make this hurt."5
The Illusion of Liberal Democracy Has Collapsed
As noted by Ehret, while we don't yet know how it will end, one thing
we can be sure of is that "the illusion of liberal democracy ... has
collapsed."6
That doesn't mean the globalist cabal will pack up their briefcases and
retire. No, they're going to fight to stay in power until the bitter
end.
But the hill they're standing on is getting steeper and slipperier by
the day. Everyone can see that they're saying one thing and doing the
complete opposite. You can't lay claim to being a defender of democracy,
freedom and equal rights for all while simultaneously declaring
peaceful citizens the enemy of the state. It's just not credible. As
noted by historically left-leaning journalist Glenn Greenwald:7
"When it comes to distant and adversarial countries,
we are taught to recognize tyranny through the use of telltale tactics
of repression. Dissent from orthodoxies is censored.
Protests against the state are outlawed. Dissenters
are harshly punished with no due process. Long prison terms are doled
out for political transgressions rather than crimes of violence.
Journalists are treated as criminals and spies. Opposition to the
policies of political leaders are recast as crimes against the state.
When a government that is adverse to the West engages
in such conduct, it is not just easy but obligatory to malign it as
despotic. Thus can one find, on a virtually daily basis, articles in the
Western press citing the government's use of those tactics in Russia,
China, Iran, Venezuela and whatever other countries the West has an
interest in disparaging ...
That the use of these repressive tactics render these
countries and their populations subject to autocratic regimes is
considered undebatable. But when these weapons are wielded by Western
governments, the precise opposite framework is imposed: describing them
as despotic is no longer obligatory but virtually prohibited.
That tyranny exists only in Western adversaries but
never in the West itself is treated as a permanent axiom of
international affairs, as if Western democracies are divinely shielded
from the temptations of genuine repression.
Indeed, to suggest that a Western democracy has
descended to the same level of authoritarian repression as the West's
official enemies is to assert a proposition deemed intrinsically absurd
or even vaguely treasonous.
The implicit guarantor of this comforting framework
is democracy. Western countries, according to this mythology, can never
be as repressive as their enemies because Western governments are at
least elected democratically. This assurance, superficially appealing
though it may be, completely collapses with the slightest critical
scrutiny."
The Dangers of Majority Despotism
As explained by Greenwald, the premise of the U.S. Constitution and
the Bill of Rights is that "majoritarian despotism is dangerous in the
extreme." "Despotism" means government in which a single entity rules
with absolute power. Usually, this entity is an individual, but
despotism can also arise out of majority rule.
It's interesting to note that while the Founding Fathers probably had
no term for what we now know as the psychology of "mass formation,"
they were clearly aware of the dangers posed by an irrational majority.
As noted by Greenwald, "the Bill of Rights consists of little more
than limitations imposed on the tyrannical measures majorities might
seek to democratically enact."
For example, even if a majority of people agree that certain ideas
and views should be criminalized, the Bill of Rights prohibits it. The
Bill of Rights also prohibits the abolishment of religious freedom, even
if a majority were to support it. Likewise, "life and liberty cannot be
deprived without due process even if 9 out of 10 citizens favor doing
so."
The Founding Fathers were clever enough to realize that majority rule
can easily become just as destructively despotic as any dictatorship.
Hence, they ensured that individual freedoms were enshrined in such a
way that even if you're the last person in the country who wants to
practice religion, you have the right to do so. The majority cannot take
that away from you.
Waking Up to Reality as It Is
Greenwald goes on to explain how the signs of tyranny in the West
have been evident for well over a decade. We just weren't paying
attention. Only now, as we stare tyranny in the face first-hand, are we
starting to really see it for what it is:
"The decade-long repression of Julian Assange and
WikiLeaks, standing alone, demonstrates how grave neoliberal attacks on
dissent have become. Many are aware of key parts of this repression ...
but have forgotten or, due to media malfeasance, never knew several of
the most extreme aspects.
While the Obama DOJ under Attorney General Eric
Holder failed to find evidence of criminality after convening a
years-long Grand Jury investigation, the then-Chairman of the Senate
Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), succeeded in
pressuring financial services companies such as MasterCard, Visa, PayPal
and Bank of America to terminate WikiLeaks' accounts and thus banish
them from the financial system, choking off their ability to receive
funds from supporters or pay their bills.
Lieberman and his neocon allies also pressured Amazon
to remove WikiLeaks from its hosting services, causing the
whistleblower group to be temporarily offline.
All of that succeeded in crippling WikiLeaks' ability
to operate despite being charged with no crime: indeed, as the DOJ
admitted, it could not prove that the group committed any crimes, yet
this extra-legal punishment was nonetheless meted out.
Those tactics pioneered against WikiLeaks — excluding
dissenters from the financial system and coercing tech companies to
deny them internet access without a whiff of due process — have now
become standard weapons. Trudeau's government seizes and freezes bank
accounts with no judicial process.
The 'charity' fundraising site GoFundMe first blocked
the millions of dollars raised for the truckers and announced it would
redirect those funds to other charities, then refunded the donations
when people pointed out, rightly, that their original plan amounted to a
form of stealing. When an alternative fundraising site, GiveSendGo,
raised millions more for the truckers, Canadian courts blocked its
distribution."
Greenwald also highlights how American politicians have pressured Big
Tech monopolies and the financial system to act as a joint censorship
arm of government. Blocking people and companies from being able to use
servers and financial transaction services have been key strategies to
silence critical voices.
Why Assange Was Targeted
According to Greenwald, Assange's capture was precipitated by his
denouncement of the Spanish government's violence against citizens of
Catalonia in 2017 and 2019. Catalonia wanted autonomy from the
Madrid-based Spanish government, and the government responded with
shocking force.
"Spain treated the activists not as domestic protesters exercising
their civic rights but as terrorists, seditionists and
insurrectionists," Greenwald writes. "Violence was used to sweep up
Catalans in mass arrests, and their leaders were charged with terrorism
and sedition and given lengthy prison sentences."
Assange did not actually express support for Catalonian independence.
He objected to the Spanish government's violent assault on civil
liberties. This was why Ecuador rescinded Assange's asylum and handed
him over to British authorities in April 2020. Since then, Assange has
been held in a high-security prison in Belmarsh, even though he's never
been convicted of a crime.
"All of this reflects, and stems from, a clear and growing Western intolerance for dissent," Greenwald writes.8
"This last decade of history is crucial to understand the
dissent-eliminating framework that has been constructed and implemented
in the West. This framework has culminated, thus far, with the stunning
multi-pronged attacks on Canadian truckers by the Trudeau government.
But it has been a long time in the making, and it is
inevitable that it will find still-more extreme expressions. It is,
after all, based in the central recognition that there is mass,
widespread anger and even hatred toward the neoliberal ruling class
throughout the West."
Surveillance Apparatus Was Created to Crush Dissent
In response to the growing anger against the ruling class, the
technocratic cabal has "opted for force, a system that crushes all forms
of dissent as soon as they emerge in anything resembling an effective,
meaningful or potent form," Greenwald notes.
A key part of that dissent-crushing system is the surveillance apparatus that has been erected all around us.9
While sold as a tool to hunt down dangerous criminals, we've come to
realize that rarely is the system ever used to go after true criminals.
Instead, it's used to identify people who disagree with a given
narrative. Its primary purpose is to stifle dissent among citizens.
As noted by the ACLU,10
while most Americans think the Patriot Act's surveillance powers are
there to facilitate the identification and roundup of terrorists, it
"actually turns regular citizens into suspects." Dissent is also stifled
by applying criminal terms to those who disagree with the narrative.
Case in point: "Anti-vaxxers" and anyone who disagrees with pandemic
measures are now labeled domestic terrorists or domestic extremists. As
noted by Greenwald:
"Applying terms of criminality renders justifiable
any subsequent acts of repression: we are trained to accept that core
liberties are forfeited upon the commission of crimes. What is most
notable, though, is that this alleged criminality is not adjudicated
through judicial proceedings — with all the accompanying protections of
judges, juries, rules of evidence and requirements of due process — but
simply by decree ...
Few things are more dangerous than a political leader
who convinces themselves that they are so benevolent and
well-intentioned that anything they do is inherently justified in light
of their noble character and their enlightened ends ...
Within the logical world where one is convinced that
they really are fighting a white nationalist, fascistic, insurrectionary
global movement to overthrow liberal democracy, then all the weapons we
were long taught to view as despotic suddenly become ennobled ...
And it is through this self-glorifying tale which
Western neoliberals are telling themselves that they have become exactly
what they shrilly insist they are battling."
We Must Repeal the Patriot Act and Pandemic Powers
In September 2021, the White House announced a $65 billion
biopreparedness initiative as part of the Biden administration's Build
Back Better plan.11
As I've explained in many previous articles, Build Back Better is part
and parcel of The Great Reset, which in turn is a technocrat-led attempt
to implement global authoritarianism. As reported by Biospace:12
"The first goal is to transform medical defense,
including an improvement and expansion of vaccines, therapeutics, and
diagnostics against known threats, and lay the groundwork for unknown
pathogens ... Secondly, the plan calls for ensuring 'situational
awareness' regarding infectious disease threats. This includes early
warning and real-time monitoring of these viral threats."
In a nutshell, what this biopreparedness initiative entails is more
invasive biosurveillance — meaning, the monitoring of your internal
biology. Right now, claims that government wants to monitor people down
to their body chemistry will earn you the title of paranoid conspiracy
theorist, yet the writing is on the wall. That's where we're headed,
even if we're not there yet.
I believe the U.S. must repeal both the Patriot Act and the
biopreparedness initiative, or else all privacy and freedom will be
destroyed.