Juliette Kayyem, 52, was the assistant secretary of homeland security for intergovernmental affairs under President Barack Obama.
She had tweeted on Thursday of her desire for the Ambassador Bridge connecting Canada to the United States to be cleared of truckers.
‘Slash the tires, empty gas tanks, arrest the drivers, and move the trucks,’ she demanded.
A Canadian financial institution has struck another blow against the attempts by the convoy group blockading Ottawa to collect on the millions of dollars it has solicited in online donations.
On Friday, TD Bank told CTV News that it would apply to surrender to an Ontario court the money that had not been refunded by GoFundMe, totalling about $1 million, as well as some $400,000 the group had accepted through direct donations.
They were quite happy working with Kim Jong Un – until they got caught.
TD Bank pays US$115,005 for North Korea & narcotics kingpin US sanctions breaches
Freedom Convoy truckers are still on the US-Canada Ambassador Bridge – in defiance of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s 7pm and then midnight deadlines to clear the road on Friday.
Trudeau had said that ‘everything is on the table’ to end the protest and Ottawa police were on the scene with threats to forcibly remove the truckers who have been blocking the busy bridge for days. Officers had also handed out flyers warning those refusing to retreat that they risked CA $100,000 fines ($78,000) and the permanent loss of their commercial driving license.
But the big showdown never came as police declined to move in on the hundreds of protesters milling around on the comparatively mild 38 degrees Fahrenheit evening. Police patrol cars were parked with their lights flashing, but few officers were visible.
#AmbassadorBridgeBlockade #WindsorBlockade pic.twitter.com/thkd1pRL1U
— John Vennavally-Rao (@jvrCTV) February 12, 2022
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doubled down on his rhetoric against the Freedom Convoy and the border blockades during a press conference Friday. He threatened “real consequences with respect to their [truckers’] licenses to their jobs.”
Currently, on Twitter, the hashtag #ExposeFauci is trending after Project Veritas published new documents which appear to contradict Anthony Fauci’s testimony that he gave under oath about the gain of function research. Over the past year, Project Veritas — which has a less than perfect track record with their hidden camera exposés — has been focusing its efforts on the medical establishment and its corruption amid the pandemic. And this week, it appears they have hit a bombshell.
The UK’s Durham University has lost its biggest individual donor, multimillionaire Mark Hillery, who pulled his financial support over Covid-19 rules he slammed as “ridiculous.”
A former hedge fund manager and university alumnus, Hillery donated almost £7m to the university’s Collingwood College between 2015 and 2021. He has funded a number of facilities, including a new arts center that bears his name, according to the student newspaper Palatinate, which was the first to reveal Hillery’s decision to withdraw his support.
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.
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.
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 ongoing blockade at the Ambassador Bridge is nothing short of a colossal failure of the Canadian state to assert its authority over one of its most basic functions: securing the border. That the federal Liberal government has so far refused to take full responsibility, declaring it a local policing issue, is an incredible embarrassment. The greatest threat to Canada right now is not insurrection or foreign interference, but the incompetency baked into the country.
"To the protestors I say, we have heard you and it's time to go."
Ontario Premier Doug Ford declares state of emergency in wake of protests against COVID-19 restrictions, calling the demonstration a "siege of the city of Ottawa." https://t.co/0B1PwDDDDJ pic.twitter.com/e0iV2dSPpL
— ABC News (@ABC) February 11, 2022
Paris police prepared on Friday for the arrival of the so-called ‘Freedom Convoy’ which is due to arrive in the French capital later that same day. The authorities said that “special machines would be utilized” to prevent the demonstrators, who have already been banned from the city, from blocking Paris.
PARIS – Des blindés de la gendarmerie sont positionnés dans la capitale. Ils pourront être utilisé pour pousser des voitures à l'arrêt. #convoisdelaliberte @CLPRESSFR pic.twitter.com/TNKByuBDOX
— Clément Lanot (@ClementLanot) February 11, 2022
