It’s been a tough couple of years for Americans, what with COVID-19, rising crime, record inflation, and a marble-mouthed grifter with dementia wandering about the White House. There certainly hasn’t been much to be happy about.
Even things that used to give us joy, like watching the Olympics and rooting hard for the U.S. of A., no longer do.
Yesterday morning in the small town of Saint-Gaudens, south-west France, a pensioner thrust a cake and 20 euros through the window of a camper van starting on the two-day ‘liberty convoy’ to Paris. Locals had prepared a table packed with provisions to sustain those driving across the country to protest against the vaccine passport and other strict covid measures. Cars had ‘freedom’ or tricolours attached to their sides; a camper van bore a sign about love on the dashboard and flew a dove of peace out of the window.
The man charged with killing six people and injuring 61 when he drove through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin last November, has pleaded not guilty on Friday to all 77 charges.
His lawyers also requested moving the trial to a different venue.
They work quickly.
As soon as Haji Matiullah Matie arrived in the United States, he became the poster boy for Afghan refugees.
In November 2021, as swarms of unvetted Afghan refugees airlifted by Biden with Taliban permission arrived in the United States, military social media accounts made him the face of Operation Allies Welcome and promoted stories about his reunion with an officer he had known.
Workers have more power than any time since the 1950s.
… This new leverage is rooted in demographic trends. The US’s working population – people aged between 16 and 64 – grew by more than 20 per cent in the 1980s. In the past decade, it has grown by less than five per cent. To make matters worse, an estimated one-third of American working-age males are not in the labour force, suffering from high rates of incarceration, and from drug, alcohol and other health issues.
This is not a uniquely American experience. China’s population, according to one recent survey, is expected to halve in less than half a century, and its population of under-60s may already be in decline. Germany, a long-established industrial powerhouse, suffers from a fatal lack of new workers – a factor in the notable slowing of its formidable manufacturing sector. Germany’s workforce is expected to drop by five million by 2030.
OK, you guys win. Masks; vaccine passports; distancing; this is the new normal.
Let’s do it forever. You win.
Whether you’re a member of the zoom-class with your newspaper tucked up beside some stack of rapid antigen tests, or you’re some Liberal trying to suck up for the next cabinet appointment, you win, we give up.
The truckers are teaching him an overdue lesson in the limits of government.
Humans form governments not to surrender their liberty but to secure it. The state exists for man, not man for the state, as many natural law philosophers have observed. According to this understanding of government, the proper response to a tyrannical law is disobedience. An unjust law, after all, isn’t a real law at all. It is an act of violence that cries out for resistance. But self-serving government officials cast such laudable resistance as a threat to the state. In truth, it is only a threat to their tyranny.
A newly released infrared image showed a ‘swarm’ of three ‘Tic-Tac shaped’ UFOs chase four U.S. Navy destroyers off the coast of California.
The grainy image has been released by the Navy and shows what appears to be three small dots, representing unmanned aerial systems (UAS), hovering near the USS Paul Hamilton. It was one of the many occurrences Naval ships saw over the course of weeks, as many destroyers spotted these contraptions in July 2019.
These three UAS appeared near the ship around 8pm on July 17 shortly after the USS Paul Hamilton cut location broadcasting via the Automatic Identification System (AIS). Ships are not required to broadcast their location 24/7 and usually disable the transponder in situations that call for heightened security.
Ward Carrol is an ex-Navy fighter pilot, this vid does not discuss events from the article above but he is worth a listen.
Russia has the troops in place to invade Ukraine “at any time” and American citizens should leave within the next 48 hours, the US has warned.
An invasion could start with aerial bombing that would make departures difficult and endanger civilians, the White House said on Friday.
A host of other countries have also urged their nationals to leave Ukraine.
Russia has repeatedly denied any plans to invade Ukraine despite massing more than 100,000 troops near the border.
It is an open secret in Canada that the Conservative Party is dead in the water or, at any rate, in total disarray. Its last two leaders, Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole, were political duds who would not recognize a conservative principle if it held a gun to their heads, and both had to resign in disgrace for scuttling the Party’s electoral chances. Over the last two electoral cycles, the Party itself has posed no threat to the governing Liberals or to their petulant, adolescent leader Justin Trudeau—whom Jordan Peterson aptly called a “teenager”—a prime minister who, though triply vaccinated, tested positive for Covid while hectoring others to get vaccinated. The contradictions escaped him perfectly. The Conservatives had as little to say about this glaring instance of mental scotoma as they did about the fact that the nation’s leader went into hiding rather than face the truckers’ Freedom Convoy when it arrived in Ottawa.
Police were handing these memos out to the crowd and answering questions. pic.twitter.com/ZcSiy2VCF7
— Kathleen Saylors (@KathleenSaylors) February 12, 2022
In his most strongly worded statement since the anti-vaccine mandate protests began nearly two weeks ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday that police and all levels of government are preparing to take action against the demonstrators behind the blockades in Ottawa, Windsor and elsewhere.
Trudeau said the protesters must stand down or face severe “consequences” for any illegal activities — consequences that include the possibility of criminal charges and steep financial penalties. He said the federal government will no longer tolerate activists who “take the economy hostage” and bring life to a standstill in the nation’s capital.
Opportunity to end convoy protest peacefully is slipping away, experts say
As the protest against vaccine mandates heads into its third weekend in Ottawa and spreads to border towns, observers say the window for ending it peacefully is closing.
On Friday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced a state of emergency as protest blockades continued to shut down parts of Ottawa’s downtown core and portions of Windsor’s Ambassador Bridge — a key cross-border supply route.
The move is largely administrative and gives Ford the power to bring in new orders to punish those who block and impede the movement of goods, people and services along critical infrastructure.
PM says ‘everything’ on the table to end blockades following Biden call
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that “everything”—with the exception of deploying the Canadian Armed Forces—is currently on the table to bring the ongoing protests and blockades set up across the country to an end.
Trudeau declined to get into specifics about just how or when the demonstrations will be ceased, citing concerns over a violent outcome.
The kind and tolerant left pic.twitter.com/wmlw09nC3k
— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) February 10, 2022
Two US senators have raised concerns that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is again spying upon unwitting Americans.
The agency has “secretly” conducted warrantless surveillance through a newly disclosed programme, Senators Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich alleged.
In a letter to intelligence officials, the two Democrats called for declassifying details of the programme.
Government data collection has been the subject of much controversy in the US.
Officially, the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) have a foreign surveillance mission and domestic spying is prohibited by the CIA’s 1947 charter.
