Serious Trouble Right Here in the Western Hemisphere!

 

Is Canada Becoming Cuba?

2/22/2022 - Dennis Prager Townhall.com

Canada is leaving the Western world.

In terms of all-encompassing government, suppression of dissent and the denial of fundamental human rights to many of its citizens, Canada is now more similar to Cuba than to any free country. Canada may eventually return to Western civilization, but as of this writing, the majority of Canadians appear to have no interest in it doing so. According to Maru Public Opinion, "two-thirds (66%) of Canadians support Prime Minister Justin Trudeau bringing in the Emergencies Act ... A majority (56%) of Canadians do not support the truckers who are protesting in any way, shape, or form ... This is a majority view held in every province/region across the country."

I suspect that most Americans -- and certainly most people outside of America or Canada -- do not know precisely what Canada's Marxist prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is doing to his country.

So, allow me to review.

Last week, for only the second time in Canadian history other than wartime -- the first time was under Justin Trudeau's father, Pierre Trudeau, the other Marxist to govern Canada -- Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act. This statute enables a Canadian prime minister to suspend fundamental human rights and rule as a dictator.

The CBC described in detail how Trudeau is using the Emergencies Act to destroy the lives of Canadian dissidents. This should be read carefully. Such policies have never been enacted by a Western country against its own citizens (with the extremely rare exceptions of those actively engaged in terrorism):

"Using powers granted under the Emergencies Act, the federal government has directed banks and other financial institutions to stop doing business with people associated with the anti-vaccine mandate convoy occupying the nation's capital.

"The government's new directive, called the 'emergency economic measures order,' goes beyond asking banks to simply stop transferring funds to protest organizers. The government wants banks to stop doing business with some people altogether.

"The order says that banks and other financial entities (like credit unions, co-ops, loan companies, trusts and cryptocurrency platforms) must stop 'providing any financial or related services' to people associated with the protests -- a move that will result in frozen accounts, stranded money and cancelled credit cards.

"The Emergencies Act gives authorities the power to freeze the finances of those connected to blockades and protests, and the consequences could last long after the demonstrations end...

"The regulation's definition of a "designated person" also includes ... anyone sending funds to support these protests...

"Mark Blumberg is a lawyer at Blumberg Segal LLP who specializes in non-profit and charity law. In an interview, he said that while the Emergencies Act gives banks time-limited powers, these institutions 'may just decide to shut the person's account down' because there could be 'huge risks' for banks servicing these customers in the future. Banks will be working with law enforcement to decide who should be 'de-banked.'

"A senior government official said ... police could gather the names and license plate numbers of people participating in a protest or an unlawful assembly and share that information with FINTRAC (Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada) ...

"Former CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) senior strategic analyst Jessica Davis (said) 'the people who are participating in the protest aren't going to be able to do things like pay bills, pay their hotel bills. They will eventually run out of supplies as well...

"With access to bank accounts and credit cards and other financial instruments suspended, protesters won't be able to pay for things like hotel and fuel bills...

"Over the longer term, Davis said, it may be hard for some of the truckers participating to ever find work again because they could lack the necessary insurance to operate a big rig. 'Paying bills, paying rent and any kind of day-to-day financial transaction can be stopped for people who are part of the protest movement,' she said. There may also be some 'unintended consequences' from frozen accounts, such as suspended alimony and child support payments, Davis said. 'It's going to be very difficult for them.'

"Banks have been granted immunity against legal action in the event of disputes over whether someone should have been denied financial services. 'No proceedings under the Emergencies Act and no civil proceedings lie against an entity for complying with this Order,' the regulations read."

None of these life-ruining, due-process defying measures is necessary. The truckers' demonstrations could have been ended by arresting drivers who would not move their trucks or simply just towing their trucks. The purpose of these regulations is to destroy dissenters and deter future dissent. In a word, it is to ruin the lives of those who disobey Justin Trudeau.

As one who has followed Canadian life over the decades -- I have lectured in nine of Canada's 10 provinces -- the moral descent of Canada is depressing but not especially surprising. Since I was in college in the 1970s, I traveled abroad every year of my life except in 2020 -- to some 130 countries. I not only took interest in the countries I visited but in the tourists who visited them. I recall well that when I was young, many young Canadians stitched a Canadian flag onto their backpacks. As almost no tourists from other nations did that, I asked Canadians why they did. Their reason was to identify themselves as Canadian rather than as American.

I am not the first observer of Canadians to note that a major part of Canadian identity -- especially among Canadian elites -- is being a not-American. Many Canadians were and remain first and foremost not-Americans. Other than that, not much defines Canadians. And when a nation stands essentially for nothing, bad things eventually happen -- because nothingness is eventually filled or replaced by bad.

On my radio show, I once asked the late Charles Krauthammer, one of the most insightful commentators of this era, what he saw as the greatest difference between his native Canada and his adopted country, the United States. Without hesitation, he said that in America the national motto is "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," and in Canada it is "Peace, Order, and Good Government."

The first inspires a nation. The second doesn't.

Upon the death of Fidel Castro, Justin Trudeau gave the most positive assessment of the Cuban tyrant of any Western leader. It is worth quoting in full because it demonstrates Trudeau's affection for communism and because Trudeau is transforming Canada into Cuba:

"It is with deep sorrow that I learned today of the death of Cuba's longest-serving President. Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation.

"While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro's supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for 'el Comandante.'

"I know my father was very proud to call him a friend and I had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away. It was also a real honor to meet his three sons and his brother, President Raul Castro, during my recent visit to Cuba.

"On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to the family, friends, and many, many supporters of Mr. Castro. We join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader."

There does remain one major difference between Canada and Cuba. Few Cubans support their Marxist leaders, but most Canadians support theirs. They don't know what they're in for.

 

 

Clinton Crime Family Must Be Held Accountable

 

Hillary Clinton's Greatest Masterpiece

2/17/2022 - Victor Davis Hanson Townhall.com

Hillary Clinton's never-ending shenanigans in 2015-2016 could be summarized as an attempted slow-motion coup.

Four years of national hysteria, a divided nation, and dangerous new tensions with Russia were some of the wages of Clinton's machinations.

Clinton hired a British national and ex-spy, Christopher Steele, to compile dirt on her election opponent, Donald Trump. She hid her likely illegal campaign payments to him through at least three paywalls - the Democratic National Committee, the Perkins Coie law firm, and the opposition research firm Fusion GPS.

Partisans in the FBI helped her, by variously spying on minor officials affiliated with the Trump campaign, like George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. To expedite its improper surveillance, a corrupt FBI hierarchy presented fraudulent documents to a FISA court that authorized the illicit surveillance.

Clinton's orbit of former subordinates and friends seeded the lies in the dossier throughout the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the CIA.

During the Trump transition, the FBI also tapped into the communications of national security advisor designate General Michael Flynn. The illegally leaked surveillance put an end to his service to the Trump Administration and ruined his life.

The country went through 22 months and $40 million in legal expenses under special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate the Clinton-inspired Russian collusion hoax.

When it was all over, Mueller's "dream team" found no such actionable Trump-Russian collusion.

Mueller himself ended up nearly humiliated, preposterously claiming under oath no knowledge about the Steele dossier or Fusion GPS - the twin pillars of deceit that prompted his own investigation.

But Clinton was undaunted.

According to a recent affidavit filed by Special Counsel John Durham, Clinton furthermore had previously hired members of the Perkins Coie law firm to contract with tech experts to leverage their own existing access to the White House and Trump servers - and tap into the top-secret communications data of candidate and then-President Trump.

Their apparent desperate purpose was to find any dirt that the failed Steele dossier had not discovered.

As a result, Clinton's tech hirelings helped promulgate another "collusion" lie that Trump Tower computers were communicating back and forth with the Russian Alfa Bank.

This additional Clinton investment in ruining Trump succeeded, as planned, in provoking media "collusion" hysteria that further paralyzed the Trump presidency.

Nightly news still trafficked in the fake Steele dossier and the Russian collusion hoax. The additional phony Alfa Bank smear was cited as further proof that Trump should be removed from office.

Clinton's efforts created the general background landscape of hysteria and untruth that greenlighted the first Trump impeachment over a phone call to the Ukrainian president.

"Collusion" helped prompt efforts to remove or discredit him through possible invocation of the 25th Amendment.

And such skullduggery mainlined the once unthinkable scenario of a military coup. In this Clinton-created climate of collective madness, retired generals referenced their commander in chief as Hitler and Mussolini-like. A former Obama Pentagon official even wrote out a scenario of a military coup removing him.

Nonetheless, Trump completed a solid record of accomplishment of border security, energy production, full employment without inflation, deregulation, and a deterrent, but not interventionist, foreign policy.

The chief criticism of his administration was that Trump believed the Washington establishment and media were out to get him. In furor, he railed nonstop that the Left had conspired to monitor his communications and break the law to ruin him.

Yet that supposed paranoia is proving to be an unpleasant reality.

What would Trump's presidency have been like had opponents like Clinton kept to normal adversarial politics? What if they had avoided spinning conspiracies, often through violation of federal laws? Could they have been content with just opposing him rather than seeking to destroy him?

One of the reasons why American-Russian relations are poor, aside from Russian President Vladimir Putin's aggressive efforts to reclaim the borders of the old Soviet Union, was the nonstop and politicized demonization of "Russia."

Americans were repeatedly and falsely told that "the Russians" had tried to destroy the Clinton campaign to partner with the traitor Trump and betray the United States. That was a slanderous lie.

Former CIA director John Brennan fed such hysteria by libeling Trump as "treasonous." The retired Director of National Intelligence James Clapper smeared Trump as a "Russian asset."

Will the nation ever demand an investigation to find out how and to what extent Hillary Clinton's subordinates and contractors infiltrated the private communications of the president of the United States?

Will the people ever learn how such false information was seeded throughout the government and media in a conspiratorial effort to destroy a sitting president?

Hillary Clinton by now is an old master of scandals. Her lifelong oeuvre is vast - the cattle futures scam, Rose law firm missing documents, Travelgate, Uranium One shenanigans, missing emails, and the Steele dossier.

But the ongoing effort of her paid associates to tap into the top-secret communications of a presidential candidate and further use such illicit information to ruin the American presidency will go down as her greatest masterpiece of deceit.

 

Illegal Immigration Has Been Weaponized by Biden Administration -- It's A War Zone on Our Southern Border

 

Supreme Court to Hear 'Remain in Mexico' Case

2/18/2022 Rebecca Downs Townhall.com

(Click Title Link to Read Tweets)

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it was taking up the "Remain in Mexico" case, after the Biden administration has appealed. The policy from the Trump administration requires those seeking asylum who come to the United States via the southern border to wait in Mexico for a hearing in the U.S. immigration court.

Upon taking office in January 2021, President Joe Biden quickly got to work getting rid of the policy, but a ruling last August from U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk in Texas upheld the policy. 

The Biden administration's version of the policy was implemented last December, as Julio highlighted from on the ground in Yuma, Arizona. 

The U.S. Supreme Court had also previously upheld "Remain in Mexico," last August after Judge Kacsmaryk's decision, but such an emergency docket decision was unsigned. This use of the shadow docket tactic has been particularly reviled by liberals. 

While SCOTUSblog and liberal news outlets such as CNN bemoan the policy as "controversial," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, both Republicans, were quick to celebrate. 

The Court will hear the case in April. Curt Levey, a constitutional law attorney and the president of the Committee for Justice took particular notice of the timing. "The Court clearly thought an expedited decision was warranted here because they squeezed a hearing into this term. The other way to expedite it would have been skipping oral argument and deciding the case on the shadow docket. Many on the left are disturbed by the Court's recent use of the shadow docket, but in most cases, it doesn't affect the substance of the ultimate outcome," Levey said.