King Charles ignored constitutional limits on his power and thereby ignited a civil war that cost him his life and put England under a military dictatorship for more than a decade. The profound constitutionalist John Selden reflected on this shortly after the king’s execution and before the eventual restoration of the constitution after Oliver Cromwell’s death:

There is no stretching of power; it is a good rule — eat within your stomach, act within your commission.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau certainly is acting like someone who has eaten more than his stomach can hold, as well as far exceeding his commission.

Brian Peckford, former premier of Newfoundland, certainly feels so and had begun taking action even before the truckers began their now-famous protests in Ottawa, at the Ambassador Bridge, and at other places throughout Canada.

Peckford was one of the authors of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canada’s equivalent of the Bill of Rights, which was joined to the Canadian Constitution in 1982. He is the leading spokesman of a group filing suit in Canada against one of the many acts of constitutional overreach: the severe restrictions the Trudeau minority government imposed on travel.

The charter states in section 6:

Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.

Every citizen of Canada and every person who has the status of a permanent resident of Canada has the right to move to and take up residence in any province…

The Canadian Constitution does provide ways that its Parliament or its provincial legislatures can specifically override this. Peckford argues, however, that no such niceties were observed and that therefore the regulations imposed are invalid, unconstitutional infringements of Canadians’ liberties.

Overreaching governments often respond by claiming that their unique knowledge and capabilities are sufficient justification for their actions. They seek not only ratification of their actions from those whose powers they have taken, but to establish a precedent — the constitution will no longer bind them from any exercise of power it deems appropriate and necessary.

The result of this is clear. The liberties guaranteed by a constitution are now subject to the government’s veto. Effectively, the subjects (no longer citizens) now have only such rights as the government chooses to allow them. This means that government is no longer by the consent of the governed. To the contrary: individual rights are by the consent of a government answerable only to its own conception of its power.

Peckford was one of the political elite, but one who was and is dedicated to the principles of Western democracy. He is forceful and eloquent; hear him out in a brilliant interview with the incandescent Jordan Peterson (start listening just shy of minute 11).

But as we have seen in the past few weeks, the peaceful protests against overreach and the trampling of liberties have burst out among the not-so-elite. Not the kings of the keyboards, not the members of the chattering class, but the people who make the country work, led by the truckers.

Something about this assertion of rights has offended Trudeau. His personality does not seem up to the task that he campaigned for and won. He looks like someone not quite adult, knowing it, and overcompensating. Watching him always gave the feeling of watching someone trying too hard to be someone other than he is.

That was when all he faced was the normal polite opposition offered in Canadian politics. Respect for the law comes naturally in a nation whose founders descended from United Empire Loyalists — those who maintained their allegiance to the British crown while America asserted its independence. Canadians achieved their own independence in a different, slower, more orderly and peaceful way, and all those qualities of peacefulness, order, and respect for law are part of the civilizational sparkle of the land of the loon and the maple leaf.

But the oppressive overreach of Trudeau’s COVID restrictions, far exceeding anything justified by the data and the science, went too far and continued too long to be mistaken by a large part of the regular working people of Canada as anything other than an assault on their rights and thus of their human dignity. They rose up peacefully, and, emulating Martin Luther King Jr.’s method of resisting unconstitutional restrictive laws, practiced non-violent civil disobedience in a way that awoke widespread support and international attention.

Trudeau began his version of respectful dialogue with his aggrieved subjects by labeling their views, without exception, as “unacceptable.” Of course, anyone, who opposes the Great Leader must be on the fringe, with no right to petition and be heard. In the prime minister’s own words, they are “very often misogynistic, racist, women-haters, science-deniers, the fringe.” He let that stand as his only characterization of the protesters. A promising invitation to a national dialogue.

Trudeau then disappeared from view, perhaps believing that the fundamental laws of reality had been so deeply breached by the protest that some natural cataclysm was in order. Perhaps the earth would open and swallow the protesters like it had swallowed up Korach and his crew of dissidents in the Bible.

As followers of Trudeau’s dad might have said — wow! Even Richard Nixon made his way out of the White House to speak to protesters and hear them out. Trudeau seems to fall short of Nixon — with all his paranoia and tics, a most modest measure to fall short of. Not content with the infringements of liberties he has already imposed, Trudeau doubled down and imposed emergency powers intended for times of war, insurrection, or an equivalent existential threat. He threatened seizure of the truckers’ livelihood, imprisonment, and barring them from their chosen work.

The posturing of Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator is coming to mind. But Trudeau knows how to spin things when an unpleasant truth is starting to come out: he projects the fascist mindset he has embraced onto those who oppose him politically (see Hillary Clinton’s similar response to the Durham filing for another classic example of this). Not once does he speak of any of the protesters as anything other than swastika-bearing enemies of all that is good, utterly to be excluded from any meaningful political rights. His power, his actions state, is not at the service of the people; the people can be utterly excluded as he sees fit. All Nazis.

Trudeau took this a little further last week. On the floor during a session of the House of Commons, a Jewish Member of Parliament, Melissa Lantsman, a member of the Conservative opposition, sharply criticized Trudeau’s invocation of unprecedented emergency powers. The grim prime minister replied: “Conservative Party members can stand with people who wave swastikas, they can stand with people who wave the Confederate flag.”

He was met with outraged shouts of “Shame!” Lantsman stood to take formal exception to Trudeau’s remarks as a breach of order and demanded an apology:

I am a strong Jewish woman and a member of this House and a descendant of Holocaust survivors and … it’s never been singled out, and I’ve never been made to feel less except for today, when the prime minister accused me of standing with swastikas. I think he owes me an apology. I’d like an apology and I think he owes an apology to all members of this House.

But Trudeau had already left the House. Why does anyone who is so completely right and who holds the highest power have to listen to criticism? They are the Nazis! He probably believes that he believes it — except that every act of petulance, contempt, and overreach shows him to be just a very small man who prefers power to responsibility.

He has eaten more than his belly can contain, Selden would say.

There are a lot of Canadians who will now have their say. A fresh wind is blowing from the north and it is reminding people all over the world of just how precious liberty is. The people will have their say and it can’t come too soon.

In case it might be helpful to someone.

There is a small suite of postings (5 – – the links are further down) on my blog to remove any doubt about the authenticity of the WEF and their agenda.   They have “half the Trudeau cabinet”  in pocket – – Klaus Schwab in video.   Etc.

Sandra

= = = = = =

If I can piece this together,  there are a whole lot of people, especially in the U.S. who can do it better and did it a long time ago.

As it happens:

While I was watching live-stream of the situation in Ottawa on Friday,

Watching the toe-to-toe  line of protestors with the police,

I would have liked to quiet the line.   And announce:

This is about an experimental drug and whether people including children, should be forcibly injected with it.  That is ALL it is about.

WHAT IN GODS’ NAME is so important that the Government MUST HAVE ALL PEOPLE AND CHILDREN INJECTED?  Once, twice, thrice, 4 times, more . . .  and none of that good enough, more boosters, every how many months?!  

That issue has caused the Government to bring in all these police from Ontario and elsewhere.  There are snipers on roof-tops, a helicopter overhead; armoured vehicle in the background.  Police are on O.T. and housed in the Chateau Laurier.

The protest is demonstrably peaceful.

Many Police are soft on the issue.  Which is why the Protestors are receiving leaked information to help them in their struggle.   Many Tow Truck companies in Ottawa won’t help the Police by responding to calls for tow trucks to take trucks away.

AND  THEN – –

I received an article by Chris George that documents Chrystia Freeland’s relationship to the  World Economic Forum, published in the Niagara Independent.  Which is all I needed – – as explained below.  . . . It’s a good article.   (Freeland – Canadian Minister of Finance)

I sent the email below to author of the article, Chris George.

Many people dismiss the World Economic Forum (WEF) as “conspiracy theory”, along with its “Great Reset” agenda.

The article by C George is another blow to the ability to dismiss the WEF.

There is a small suite of postings on my blog to remove any doubt about the authenticity of the WEF and their agenda.  They are the reason that traditional means of bringing about corrections to Government policies do not, will not, and can not work.

Klaus Schwab is the founder of the WEF and the author of the book, “The Great Reset”.

– – keep reading.  I have watched the video in which Schwab states (in a moment of ill-advised hubris, I’d say):  he uses the word “infiltrated” in relation to the Trudeau Cabinet.  (Not only the Canadian cabinet.)

2022-01-26 Klaus Schwab: half of the Canadian Cabinet are from the “Young Global Leaders” program of the WEF      a SHORT VIDEO.

The C George article re Freeland’s relationship to the WEF:   as explained below,  I looked into Freeland in 2015.   Only because I recognized the  name “Larry Summers” from the Wall Street crimes in 2007-08.

You may want to know what The Great Reset has in mind for your children and grand children.  Canadians are getting a taste of it right now.   Jason Kenney (I am not a fan of) expands a bit on what the WEF envisions  –  he does it well, to my surprise!  – – Schwab sent him a copy of the book.

See also:   2017-12-20 Trudeau and the Aga Khan.

EMAIL TO CHRIS GEORGE

From: Sandra Finley
Sent: February 19, 2022 8:20 PM
Subject: your article, Where is Chrystia Freeland’s priority?

Dear Mr. George,

Your article re Freeland is important elucidation for Canadians.

There is CONTEXT  (appended) for your article, on my blog.

I looked at Freeland in some depth, in about 2015.

– – – – – – – – –

My interest in Freeland started with her connection to Larry Summers.  And Dominic Barton.

Summers was brought in by the Liberals in advance of the 2015 Election.  Ostensibly to advise them on Economic Policy which was seen as their weak point in defeating the Harper Conservatives.   It was Trudeau’s first run at the Prime Ministership.

I remembered Summers’ name – – advisor to Obama whose advice meant that the Wall Street racketeers (2007-08) got off scot-free and with grand largesse from the public purse.

That Summers would be advising a potential Canadian Government sounded clanging alarm bells in my brain.

Freeland did her PhD (Harvard) under Larry Summers (Economics), who a bit later became President of Harvard.

His dealings with Russians – – big dollar contracts – -, helping them with Capitalism…  Summers was basically scamming the Russians.   They brought suit in the U.S..  And won.

As a consequence, the U.S. Govt fined Harvard $26 Million to cover the costs and settlement of the Russian lawsuit.

Harvard was furious with Summers over the $26 million fine, needless to say!  Some Harvard profs had previously been complaining about the integrity of Summers’ work;  they were vindicated   – – Summers was dumped as Pres of Harvard.

The petals fell off the sweet-smelling rose for the Russians;   they lost their enthusiasm for contracting with U.S. “specialists” who could guide them in the ways of capitalism.  Other “partnerships” also suffered from the thorns.

Summers fell on hard times with a tarnished reputation until Freeland, in her role at the Financial Times, offered her former thesis supervisor a weekly column.   Which was successful;  his columns were well received   . . .   fast forward  – – Summers’ net worth saw a steep incline, Wall Street contracts —   then the 2007—08 fiasco and Summers’ advisory role to Obama.  No prosecutions.  Yahda, yahda.

So now, the Cdn Liberals need advisors for economic policy (2015).   They bring in Summers.   Also Dominic Barton.

INSERT:  I just did some quick reading re the Trudeaus and their visits to the Aga Khan’s island in the Bahamas.   The first trip was in 2014.

By this time, these people are all intertwined with the globalist money elites.

I don’t know the order of things:  Freeland was recruited to run for the Liberals . . .  by . . .  who?

Trudeau had already (?) been recruited by Klaus Schwab (WEF,  Young Global Leaders Program).  Who was it that brought in Summers, the shady guys, the financial mafiosos from the Wall Street betrayal of Main Street?

When Klaus Schwab (video link below) says that Trudeau is one of their guys (WEF), and that the WEF has “infiltrated” the Trudeau Cabinet (they have half of the Cabinet), of course, as you document very well – – Freeland is one of theirs.

I am encouraged:  mis-characterization of the WEF and the Great Reset as “conspiracy theory” is breaking into the public discourse.  Your article is helpful.

I was surprised by the following video – – Kenney saying:  the Great Reset is the title of a book.  He should know because Klaus Schwab sent him a copy.  He goes on to ridicule the Davos crowd.

INSERT:

That is ALL it is about.  It’s why there is so much support for the Truckers, around the world.  Lots of people KNOW.  Just like lots of people knew about Epstein.  Circles of the wealthy – – it’s why $20 million has been donated to the Truckers Freedom Convoy.  Not because of funding by “terrorists”.  It’s funding by wealthy people with a conscience.  It’s a matter of how to nail the perpetrators.  Don’t worry – – it’s in the works.

There may be something in the following postings that will be beneficial to you or to someone else.

Best wishes,

Sandra Finley  www.sandrafinley.ca

Vancouver Island  250-594-9898

1.  2022-02-12 Where is Chrystia Freeland’s priority? Niagara Independent, Chris George

2.  2022-02-17 Great Reset: Trudeau Agenda. Jason Kenney explains the Great Reset just as covid 19 pandemic was unleashed in early 2020

3.  2022-01-26 Klaus Schwab: half of the Canadian Cabinet are from the “Young Global Leaders” program of the WEF

4.  2022-02-05  Jim Watson (Mayor of Ottawa)   So, let’s take a peek under the hood. You don’t have to dig long to see why Jim is a fan of authoritarian moves

Here you see Ottawa mayor Watson at the WEF.  (He has quite a long history of association,  not shown.)

5.  2022-02-08 Italy’s Archbishop Carlos Maria Vigano Endorses the Canadian Truck Drivers Against the New World Order (VIDEO and Transcript)

I think this is an important contribution;  an “influencer” of some public opinion puts these “globalist” forces  on the table.  Named.

There is too much in these next postings, done over a few years.  They are for skimming.  The first one might be sufficient.

2017-05-25 Larry Summers – Dominic Barton connection. “Inclusive Capitalism Initiative” as “re-branding”. Summers bad news (corrupt), Canadian financial matters, advisor to Liberals.

https://sandrafinley.ca/blog/?p=19166\

2017-06-02 The Liberals have ended up with an infrastructure bank that offers Canadians only downsides and risk, National Post

https://sandrafinley.ca/blog/?p=19316

2014-05-27 ‘Inclusive capitalism’ the big new thing? from DW, German international broadcaster. (Dominic Barton)

https://sandrafinley.ca/blog/?p=19172

The “re-branding” of capitalism after the 2007-08 fall from grace.

= = =  =   THE END!  = = = = =

Sandra Finley

Ray writes:

an excellent distillation of the ‘looming’ ( and already present) headwaters coming down the pike!

https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/reality-honks-back?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

N.S. Lyons Feb 16

Like many, I have spent the last couple of weeks a bit entranced by the trucker protests happening in Canada (and now around the world, from Paris to Wellington). I initially tried to document here every twist and turn of the Freedom Convoy drama, but found it nearly impossible. Events continue to unfold very quickly. As I write this, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has just invoked the Emergencies Act (i.e. martial law), allowing him to suspend civil liberties and basically do whatever he wants (more on that later) to crush the protests. So they may soon be quelled. Or perhaps not. No one can yet say precisely how all this may end.

But in any case news and commentary detailing the protests can now be found everywhere, so I’m just going to assume you already have a familiarity with what’s happening, as I want to try to distill a few more unique thoughts on why I find these protests so striking.

Specifically, why all this seems like such a perfect reflection of the Reality War.

In that essay, I noted how from the perspective of those with the most wealth and power, as well as the technocratic managers and the intelligentsia (our “priestly class, keepers of the Gnosis [Knowledge]”), digital technology and global networks seem to have created “an unprecedented opportunity for Theory to wrest control from recalcitrant nature, for liquid narrative to triumph over mundanely static reality, and for all the corrupt traditional bonds of the world to be severed, its atoms reconfigured in a more correct and desirable manner.”

In this mostly subconscious vision of “Luxury Gnosticism,” the “middle and lower classes can then be sold dispossession and disembodiment as liberation, while those as yet ‘essential’ working classes who still cling distastefully to the physical world can mostly be ignored until the day they can be successfully automated out of existence.”

I also quoted a passage from the late Christopher Lasch’s book The Revolt of the Elites that is worth repeating here:

The thinking classes are fatally removed from the physical side of life… Their only relation to productive labor is that of consumers. They have no experience of making anything substantial or enduring. They live in a world of abstractions and images, a simulated world that consists of computerized models of reality – “hyperreality,” as it’s been called – as distinguished from the palatable, immediate, physical reality inhabited by ordinary men and women. Their belief in “social construction of reality” – the central dogma of postmodernist thought – reflects the experience of living in an artificial environment from which everything that resists human control (unavoidably, everything familiar and reassuring as well) has been rigorously excluded. Control has become their obsession. In their drive to insulate themselves against risk and contingency – against the unpredictable hazards that afflict human life – the thinking classes have seceded not just from the common world around them but from reality itself.

So let’s consider this using the protests as a lens, and vice versa.

To simplify, let’s first identify and categorize two classes of people in society, who we could say tend to navigate and interact with the world in fundamentally different ways.

The first is a class that has been a part of human civilization for a really long time. These are the people who work primarily in the real, physical world. Maybe they work directly with their hands, like a carpenter, or a mechanic, or a farmer. Or maybe they are only a step away: they own or manage a business where they organize and direct employees who work with their hands, and buy or sell or move things around in the real world. Like a transport logistics company, maybe. This class necessarily works in a physical location, or they own or operate physical assets that are central to their trade.

The second class is different. It is, relatively speaking, a new civilizational innovation (at least in numbering more than a handful of people). This group is the “thinking classes” Lasch was writing about above. They don’t interact much with the physical world directly; they are handlers of knowledge. They work with information, which might be digital or analog, numerical or narrative. But in all cases it exists at a level of abstraction from the real world. Manipulation and distribution of this information can influence the real world, but only through informational chains that pass directives to agents that can themselves act in the physical world – a bit like a software program that sends commands to a robot arm on an assembly line. To facilitate this, they build and manage abstract institutions and systems of organizational communication as a means of control. Individuals in this class usually occupy middle links in these informational chains, in which neither the inputs nor outputs of their role has any direct relationship with or impact on the physical world. They are informational middlemen. This class can therefore do their job almost entirely from a laptop, by email or a virtual Zoom meeting, and has recently realized they don’t even need to be sitting in an office cubicle while they do it.

For our purposes here, let’s call these two classes the Physicals and the Virtuals, respectively.

When considering the causes and character of the current protest, and the response to it, I would say the divide between Physicals and Virtuals is by far the most relevant frame of analysis available. In fact I’d say this is among the most significant divides in all of Western politics today.

Much has rightly been made of the “working class” and their alienation from “the elite.” But this phrasing comes mixed up with associations about material wealth and economic class that aren’t necessarily helpful. Many (though not all) of those who support “populist” politics in opposition to the elite tend to frequently be either fairly solidly middle-class skilled tradesmen, relatively successful small businessmen, or land-holders (e.g. farmers, ranchers, real estate entrepreneurs) who are often actually relatively well-off. It is the character of their work that seems to shape the common identity and values of each side of the class divide more than income.

So too does this difference appear to widen – and perhaps even help explain the root of – the huge and growing gender divide in politics, given the fairly well-established preference (on average) by men to work with “things” (more concrete) and women to work with “people” (more abstract).

Meanwhile, this class divide also maps closely onto another much-discussed political wedge: the geographic split between cities, where most of the Virtuals are concentrated, and the outlying exurbs and rural hinterlands, where the Physicals remain predominant. I would suggest the nature of these two classes plays a significant role in shaping the local cultures of these places. And as anyone following events in the United States, U.K., Australia, or Europe over the last few years (such as Brexit, or the Yellow Vest protests in France) could tell you by now, partisan differences between urban metropolitan cores and provinces seem to have become one of the defining features of politics across the Western democratic world.

Below is a map of the eastern half of the United States showing at very high detail the geographic distribution of votes cast in the 2016 presidential election. The urban-rural divide between political parties couldn’t be more stark.

Differences in the Canadian electoral system mean I can’t show you a similar map for Canada, but you can be assured that the urban-rural divide there is just as significant.

But the most relevant distinction between Virtuals and Physicals is that the Virtuals are now everywhere unambiguously the ruling class. In a world in which knowledge is the primary component of value-added production (or so we are told), and economic activity is increasingly defined by the digital and the abstract, they have been the overwhelming winners, accumulating financial, political, and cultural status and influence.

In part this is because the ruling class is also a global class, and so has access to global capital. It is global because the world’s city-brains are directly connected with each other across virtual space, and are in constant communication. Indeed their residents have far more in common with each other, including across national borders, than they do with the local people of their own hinterlands, who are in comparison practically from another planet.

But the Virtual ruling class has a vulnerability that it has not yet solved. The cities in which their bodies continue to occupy mundane physical reality require a whole lot of physical infrastructure and manpower to function: electricity, sewage, food, the vital Sumatra-to-latte supply chain, etc. Ultimately, they still remain reliant on the physical world.

The great brain hubs of the Virtuals float suspended in the expanse of the Physicals, complex arterial networks pumping life-sustaining resources inward from their hosts. So when the Physicals of the Canadian host-body revolted against their control, the Virtual class suddenly faced a huge problem.

When the truckers rolled their big rigs, which weigh about 35,000 pounds, up to the political elite’s doorstep, engaged their parking brakes (or removed their wheels entirely), and refused to leave until their concerns were addressed, this was like dropping a very solid boulder of reality in the Virtuals’ front lawn and daring them to remove it without assistance. And because the Virtuals do not yet actually have the Jedi powers to move things with their minds, the truckers effectively called their bluff on who ultimately has control over the world.

It turns out that not only do the Physicals still exist, and are (for now) still able to drive themselves into the heart of the cities, they actually still have power – a lot of power. In the middle of a supply chain crisis, those truckers represent the total reliance of the ruling elite on the very people they find alien and abhorrent. To many of the Virtuals, this is existentially frightening.

The reaction of the Virtual ruling class – represented by the absolutely archetypal modern progressive male, Justin Trudeau – to this challenge has been extremely telling, and rather predictable.

Their first reaction was to dismiss the 50,000-strong convoy as representing, in Trudeau’s words, a “small fringe minority with unacceptable views.” Being, after all, divorced from reality, he did not seem to have any understanding of the implications of what was barreling toward him. No one in his government seems to have prepared at all in the days leading up to the truckers’ arrival as the Freedom Convoy drove all the way across the country to Ottawa.

But once they grasped the situation, the Virtuals’ response was to turn immediately to their default means of dealing with any problem: narrative and informational control.

Trudeau checked his diary list of most used phrases and – after fleeing the city for “security reasons” – unleashed all of them at once in one great shotgun blast of smears, saying the truckers were guilty of “antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia,” not to mention “misogyny” and being “anti-science.” He accused them of flying “racist flags” and “waving swastikas” (only one seems to have ever been spotted, before being swiftly ejected by the crowd), and announced that he would refuse to meet with them because of he could not go “anywhere near protests that have expressed hateful rhetoric and violence.” He declared Canadians to be “shocked and frankly, disgusted” with the protestors.

His class allies leaped to the same line of attack. Catherine McKenney, Ottawa’s non-binary, social justice-loving councilor, accused the Freedom Convoy of promoting “very right-wing extremist messages” and being “part of a movement, that is extreme and that is xenophobic.” Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly declared them to be “increasingly dangerous” and “hateful.”   Ontario Premier Doug Ford labeled it “an occupation” and a “siege.” The chair of the city’s police services board ranted that the “siege” was part of a “nationwide insurrection” and “a threat to our democracy.” Angry demands started being made for Trudeau to call in the military.

Canadian state media lustily played along, attempting to ham-fistedly shove the whole phenomenon into an American political frame. The whole convoy was a “pseudo-Trumpian grift” that was “organized and led by documented racists and QAnon-style nutters.” Anchors gravely compared footage of smiling, Canadian flag waving grandmas, diverse crowds of dancing Sikhs, and children playing in bouncy castles to “January 6” and “white supremacy.” American outlets like Politico and the New York Times warned of the “far-right” having been “galvanized” worldwide. Allegations of the protests having been organized and funded by no less than the Russians were seriously aired.

Academic “extremism experts” were trundled onto television to confirm that this was in fact a pack of literal terrorists, and that if even the protests were technically entirely peaceful (crime in downtown Ottawa having actually fallen), this was only a maliciously cunning cover to enable mass violence. “By what common understanding of the term does what we are seeing on the ground, on TV, in our social media feeds qualify as ‘peaceful protest?’” asked one, presumably talking about the hug-ins, or maybe the on-site meals for the homeless. “Is it merely the absence of physical violence and injury? That’s not unimportant but is insufficient as a definitional threshold.” TV talking heads nod sagely.

Facebook and Twitter of course also quickly shut down the accounts and groups set up by protestors to communicate (often with hundreds of thousands of members), not only in Canada but in countries across the world. They cited the need to prevent the spread of “misinformation.”

If all this seemed awfully synchronized, that’s the whole point. Systematic information control, or what the Chinese Communist Party refers to as “public opinion management,” is now the entire strategic response of the Virtual class to every political problem.

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But have a little sympathy for them: they do this not just because it is cynically convenient (though it is), but because this is literally the only way they know how to navigate and influence the world. The post-modern fish swims in a narrative sea, and their first reaction is always to try to control it (through what the CCP calls “discourse power”) because at heart they well and truly believe in the idea of the “social construction of reality,” as Lasch pointed out in the quote at top. If there is no fixed, objective truth, only power, then the mind’s will rules the world. Facts can be reframed as needed to create the story that best produces the correct results for Progress (this is why you will find journalists are now professionally obsessed with “storytelling” rather than reporting facts).

Normally all one need do is recast the dominant narrative of events in such a way as to allow the system to reestablish compliance by enough links in the informational control chains to inspire physical action in meat space – or at least just distract the public until the problem goes away. The problem is that none of this has worked to move the trucks.

The Virtual class can’t move the trucks. Smears alone can’t move trucks. All the towing companies in Ottawa have refused to move the trucks. Because, surprisingly, it turns out tow truck drivers also drive trucks for a living. There aren’t enough police to seize the trucks, because the rank and file police in Ottawa have been taking all of their vacation and sick days, mysteriously not showing up for work, or simply resigning. It turns out that police officers tend to also be part of the Physical class, and class solidarity may actually be a thing.

Meanwhile, even the narrative reframing trick – which usually works great – has been failing. There’s simply been too wide a gulf between what citizens have been told and what they can see with their own eyes. Sympathy for the truckers’ cause actually seems to have grown. More than half of Canadians now oppose continuing to mandate vaccines, and two-thirds now support removing COVID-19 restrictions. Multiple Liberal MPs have turned on Trudeau to speak out against his approach. Five provinces have now moved to end pandemic restrictions, including Ontario.

No matter how desperately Trudeau has scrambled to change the narrative, he hasn’t yet succeeded. Even a gambit to threaten the truckers with having their children removed by child protection services – presumably to make it easier to instigate a narratively convenient violent confrontation – has only led to backlash so far. Relentless discipline by the truckers has provided him with almost nothing to work with.

Which is why the Virtual elite have steadily escalated up the ladder of more and more coercive informational control, leveraging their hold on state power to try to compel compliance by the revolting Physicals. This began with the government requesting crowdfunding site GoFundMe shut down the $10 million in funds raised there for the truckers. The company complied immediately, saying the Freedom Convoy had engaged in “an abuse of power” (what power was unclear) and was supporting “hate, violence, harassment, bullying, discrimination, terrorism, and intolerance.” Then came as many legal fines for obscure violations as authorities could find to throw at the truckers, while a replacement fundraiser on GiveSendGo was also frozen by a Canadian court.

But now, with the protests in their third week, Trudeau has gone nuclear, invoking Canada’s Emergencies Act for the first time in its history. A renamed version of what was once called the War Measures Act, this allows him to override civil liberty protections in order “to remove the blockades, including by force.” Trudeau specified this includes the ability to compel the tow companies to move the trucks.

And while Trudeau has denied that he will use his new powers to deploy the military against the Canadian people, his finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, said that financial institutions will be instructed to “cease providing financial services where the institution suspects that an account is being used to further the illegal blockades and occupations,” and that that they “will be able to immediately freeze or suspend an account without a court order” and with full “protection against civil liability.” All crowd-funding platforms will now also fall under the control of “Canada’s anti-money laundering and terrorist financing rules,” which will require fundraising campaigns to be approved by Canadian intelligence services.

That Trudeau’s government would choose to jettison any remaining illusion of Canada still being a liberal democracy just to harm their political class enemies isn’t too surprising. It’s their method of doing so that is particularly striking: control over digital financial assets is pretty much the ultimate leverage now available to the Virtuals. We should expect more use of this tool around the world anywhere the Physicals continue to revolt against their masters.

And here the Virtuals have a significant advantage because they are free to use the maximum level of coercive force available in their natural domain, while the Physicals cannot – because, in the physical world, that would mean violence, which is something the protestors have rightly forsworn.

So, the current trucker protests in Canada may soon be brought to a close by the state. But this is unlikely to mark the end of the story.

The great Honkening of 2022 has already been revelatory to people around the world. It is the climax of a process in which all the divides in society, including between the “Physicals” and “Virtuals” I’ve described here, have been revealed by the pandemic and governments’ responses. At the same time, the pandemic served to clarify the continued reliance of the Virtual class on “essential workers.” The revelation of the exceptional vulnerability of modern supply chains has demonstrated very clearly to everyone paying attention that the Physicals still possess tremendous power of their own as long as they are able to act in unity and solidarity – or as many signs at the protests have pointed out to the Virtuals: “no truckers, no food.”

In this sense the Freedom Convoy has already become the most successful labor movement in decades, awakening a genuine new “class consciousness” (as a Marxist would put it) in the minds of the reality-based “working class.” And it is notable that this has already become a transnational phenomenon, with the convoy protests spreading like wildfire around the globe precisely because the exact same divide now exists in so many developed countries, where the Virtual ruling class has everywhere overreached with similarly hubris.

Naturally, the Virtuals have everywhere greeted this development with horror. Looking at the map above, or out their windows, they may have realized just how vulnerable they are holed up in their cities. Perhaps they are imagining that, should the Physicals outside – who they once felt safe to ignore – engage in not just scattered protests but a full-scale revolutionary revolt, or even simply a general strike – suspending all movement of goods – their bastions of enlightened civilization would be starving, shivering, and buried in trash within a week.

So of course they hate and fear the truckers. It’s no wonder that Trudeau is panicking and behaving a bit like a dictator facing an existential challenge to his rule. In a sense he is.

There is an obvious irony here in the fact that ostensibly left-wing parties, like Trudeau’s Liberals, have everywhere turned viciously on the working class – an observation that is now widespread, as far as I can tell thanks mainly to the satirists at the Babylon Bee – but this is merely the culmination of a long, inevitable political realignment that’s occured across the West as the “left” became the party of the Virtuals, the socialist revolution became a revolution against fixed reality, and the Physicals became the backwards, reactionary others standing in the way of Progress.

For the Virtual elite, the most unforgiveable thing about the Physicals, and the physical world in general, is that they stubbornly refuse to yield to full, frictionless control. There is a reason the dominant informational class is today most comfortable in a purely virtual environment – it’s one where they can have direct, instantaneous control over (virtual) matter. Real matter is stubbornly resistant, a reminder that the self doesn’t control the universe. It’s dirty, polluting, a reminder of one’s vulnerability, even mortality. And the need to rely on other humans to deal with it is super awkward.

So expect the Virtuals of the ruling class to double down on trying to exert control, moving with all haste to develop new and innovative methods of information management and coercion to try to eliminate every human vulnerability from the machine. Self-driving truck startups are about to have an excellent next funding round.

But at least in the near term it’s Physicals like the truckers that have the advantage. They are the ones with the real leverage, and now they know it.

Trudeau and co. just better hope the workers don’t start reading Mao like he did in his youth, or they’ll learn all about how that revolutionary managed to win by “surrounding the cities from the countryside.” Or how Mao began his revolution by declaring that “a single spark can start a prairie fire” – but then the Canucks seem to have already managed to do that part already.

Minister Chrystia Freeland.

In Ottawa she is referred to as the “Minister of Everything.” As Deputy PM, Chrystia Freeland is at the very centre of all policy decisions in the Trudeau Government. She is responsible for Canada’s fiscal policies and its economic recovery from the pandemic. As Canada’s Finance Minister she is scheduled to deliver a federal budget in the coming weeks.

Chrystia Freeland also happens to hold stewardship responsibilities at the World Economic Forum (WEF). For the past three years, she has sat as a trustee on its Board. She was placed on the Board by celebrated globalist Klaus Schwab, who is principal architect of The Great Reset. As an executive member of the WEF now, Freeland is committed to advancing its global agenda and she works closely with Schwab.

Freeland’s multiple responsibilities to multiple agendas have raised questions about potential divided loyalties. What should Canadians expect from this “Minister of Everything?”

To get a sense of what motivates the woman, one must glance back at Freeland’s path to Ottawa and the friends she made along the way. Freeland is a journalist by profession. The 53 year old started her journalism career as a stringer in Ukraine for the Washington Post and Financial Times. She assumed greater responsibilities through successive editorial positions with UK News, the Globe and Mail, Reuters and eventually with Thomson Reuters Digital in New York.

In that time covering international financial news, Freeland wrote two books – the second of which gained her some recognition. Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. The book presented Freeland’s thesis that globalization has created a class of uber-wealthy people, which she describes as “a nation unto themselves.” Freeland observed, “The big danger, though, is … as the people at the very top become ever richer, they have an even greater ability to tilt the rules of the game in their favour.”

On the surface the book provides a critical look at the uber-wealthy sect, yet Freeland endeared herself to a few key members of this exclusive circle with her description of “good, technocratic friendly plutocrats.” She lauded the agenda of a New World Order and the visionary merits of “good oligarchs” such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and George Soros. It is from this writing experience that Soros and Freeland become close friends – even to the extent that she was commissioned to write the multi billionaire’s biography.

The Freeland / Soros connection cannot be overstated as today she is a known personality among the Davos elite. The connection likely played a part with WEF Founder Klaus Schwab personally sponsoring Freeland to the Board of Trustees. As a trustee, Freeland is part of a small group of financiers and billionaires who oversee a 700-person bureaucracy mandated to coordinate a global response to economic, environmental, social and technological challenges.

With this as background, now fast-forward to January 2021 when the WEF held virtual Davos Meetings that featured discussions on The Great Reset and a new document Davos Manifesto, authored by Klaus Schwab. In short, these meetings presented Schwab’s plan to take advantage of the economic disruption caused by the coronavirus and to redesign capitalism. Schwab writes in the Davos Manifesto, “We should seize this moment to ensure that stakeholder capitalism remains the new dominant model.”

Introduced as Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Freeland attended these WEF meetings to take part in public and private meetings, and to participate as a panelist in the discussion “Implementing Stakeholder Capitalism.” The obvious question arises: which hat(s) was Freeland wearing — lead minister in the Canadian Government or board trustee of the WEF, or both?

Though the potential for divided loyalties and compromising policy positions is clearly evident, not one media reporter or political commentator in Canada would raise this issue — that is but for Rupa Subramanya. In her February 2nd National Post column, Subramanya wrote of the WEF meetings and The Great Reset, “There’s no need to invent conspiracy theories. The attempt by global elites to subvert local democracy is fully on and in plain view.”

To her full credit, Subramanya honed in on the fundamental concern about Chrystia Freeland’s multiple interests with the WEF, “These board memberships are far from symbolic. According to the WEF, the board of trustees “act as guardians of its mission and values” and are its “highest-level governance body”…  What would happen if acting as a “guardian” for the WEF came into conflict with acting as a guardian for Canada’s public finances, which is Freeland’s day job?”

Subramanya tweeted even more pointed observations: “From being a critic of plutocrats to being on the board of trustees of their favourite stomping board, Chrystia Freeland’s strong ties to WEF raises legit questions about how their agenda could conflict with her day job as Canada’s FM and Deputy PM.” And she concluded in another tweet, “The optics are beyond bad and should concern Canadians… Chrystia Freeland’s side gig with the WEF is endangering Canadian democracy.”

So, there are numerous ethical questions. Has Canada’s Deputy PM and Finance Minister declared her WEF interests and had them cleared by Parliament’s Ethics Commissioner? Does Freeland receive WEF Trustee fees, expenses, or other benefits from the WEF? Does Freeland publicly declare what official positon she represents when appearing in a meeting where there could be a conflict of interest – such as at the WEF Davos Meetings or policy meetings with foreign politicians? Does Freeland recuse herself from Cabinet discussions when it is deliberating on matters pertaining to the policy objections of the WEF?

There are also practical questions around Freeland as Finance Minister managing the country’s fiscal policy and its economic recovery plans. Freeland will deliver the highest deficit in the G-20 and announce spending plans that will top an astounding trillion dollars of Canadians’ money. The federal government issued 100,000,000 government cheques to individuals in the last 10 months and it continues to hint at an uncosted guaranteed income for Canadians. Both Freeland and the Prime Minister have said they see the pandemic as “an opportunity” to build back better with a green agenda – and Canadians can expect both carbon tax hikes and billions of dollars of subsidies in new green programs. Is this all in Canadians’ best interests or is it part of the WEF’s plan to redesign capitalism and reset our economy?

With the upcoming federal budget, will Freeland stand in the House of Commons to deliver a WEF or a Canadian document? This is a reasonable question for Canadians to ask when you are “Minister of Everything.”

Chris George

Chris George is an advocate, government relations advisor, and writer/copy editor. As president of a public relations firm established in 1994, Chris provides discreet counsel, tactical advice and management skills to CEOs/Presidents, Boards of Directors and senior executive teams in executing public and government relations campaigns and managing issues. Prior to this PR/GR career, Chris spent seven years on Parliament Hill on staffs of Cabinet Ministers and MPs. He has served in senior campaign positions for electoral and advocacy campaigns at every level of government. Today, Chris resides in Almonte, Ontario where he and his wife manage www.cgacommunications.com. Contact Chris at chrisg.george@gmail.com.

From      2010-02-25 Understanding why we flounder, help from John Ralston Saul “On Equilibrium”

All that is needed is

a troubled time or

a voice capable of exacerbating our fears, playing upon them, or

a critical mass of insecure minds in a critical place. 

Suddenly we discover that our ability to think and argue has been locked up in methodology, truth and dogma.  This is the cheapest, the fastest, way to self-confidence. 

And in fleeing the dangers of free enquiry, reason is blown immediately into the truly dangerous waters of certainty. 

Thought, after all, may be our most unusual quality.  Perhaps it is also our most delicate, the one most immediately dependent upon the tension created by our other qualities.   

– – – – – –  – – – – – –

BEING CONSCIOUS OF OUR QUALITIES, SEEING THEM AT WORK

My interpretation of John Ralston Saul (JRS):  if we use our qualities, one-with-the-other in balance, we will not have all the problems created by being one-dimensional, linear-thinking rational.

P. 314 “On Equilibrium” by JRS:  “There was – is – no real danger, only the fear.  The fear of danger here is the fear of uncertainty.  And because of that fear, reason can swing into deformity perhaps faster than any of our other qualities. (INSERT:  the qualities are common sense, ethics, imagination, intuition, memory and reason)

All that is needed is a troubled time or a voice capable of exacerbating our fears, playing upon them, or a critical mass of insecure minds in a critical place.  Suddenly we discover that our ability to think and argue has been locked up in methodology, truth and dogma.  This is the cheapest, the fastest, way to self-confidence.  And in fleeing the dangers of free enquiry, reason is blown immediately into the truly dangerous waters of certainty.  Thought, after all, may be our most unusual quality.  Perhaps it is also our most delicate, the one most immediately dependent upon the tension created by our other qualities.   

That is why the worst thing we can do is to overstate the rational case.  Of the six qualities it is the least capable of (dealing with a situation that is driven by fear and insecurity)   ….  Ethics can deal with the choices of life in a much more complex and interesting way.”

From the email sent. . .,

“(4 of X) Propaganda, Democracy:  Imagining “the other”, more re Kitty Werthmann”

John Ralston Saul says:

To use our qualities is to be conscious of our actions. .”  He speaks of intuition as being a driver behind action.

Yes – I can see where it is intuition that compels me.  I don’t know if JRS would say it this way:  there are some things that you know you need to do.  Common sense, ethics, imagination, memory and reason have a role to play.  But it is when you add the 6^th quality, intuition, to these other qualities that we move forward to “do something” to address the situation.

Unfortunately, our educational system often denies the legitimacy of intuition.  We are trained right out of it.  We don’t know what it is, or how it works and yet it is an essential human quality.