"Without Prejudice" Soon you will hear "Peace and Security"
Those who have ears Hear ....
Those who have eyes See ....
Read the Signs of the Times .....
For the time is here when investors and bankers will not tolerate sound advise...
And they will flock to hear charlatans and wander off after their demise...
Trudeau unveils Canada’s international proof-of-vaccination for COVID-19
“I’m happy to confirm that all provinces and territories have confirmed that they will be moving forward with a standardized national proof of vaccination,” Trudeau said, speaking to reporters.
He added that Saskatchewan, Ontario, Québec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador and all three territories have put this national standard into use.
Canada lifts blanket travel advisory on non-essential travel
Canada lifts blanket travel advisory on non-essential travel – Oct 22, 2021
That’s because the new national standard uses the provincial vaccine certificate as its framework. If you’ve already downloaded that provincial proof of vaccination document and it has the federal seal of approval in the top right corner, the government says you should be all set.
“You can download it into your phone, you can print it out, you can ask for a copy by mail if you don’t have those capacities, but you are now able to show proofs of vaccination immediately in all those provinces, and all other provinces have agreed and are working hard to come online,” he said.
The vaccine passport will have a common look and feel across the country, according to officials, including a “Canada” wordmark in the top corner.
Canadians will be able to use the proof of vaccination system both within Canada and for international travel, the officials said.
While the Canadian government’s webpage about the passport system reminds Canadians to “avoid non-essential travel,” should you choose to, this certificate should be uploaded into the ArriveCAN app for your return to Canada.
However, “this proof does not guarantee you entry to another country,” the webpage reads.
“Before you travel, you must check the rules of your destination country and the countries you transit through,” it explains.
“Provinces and territories may also ask you to use this proof to access non-essential services.”
If you’ve already downloaded the proof of vaccination certificate with the “Canada” wordmark on the top right corner and your vaccination status hasn’t changed, you won’t need to download anything new, according to the website.
Regardless, Canadians should “be sure to bring a digital and paper copy with you when you travel.”
Officials said the proof of vaccination system also complies with the SMART Health Card standard, which uses technology that will allow officials to verify and authenticate the information without giving access to any other health or identity information.
The system is also supposed to be tamper-proof, the officials added, as it detects any changes to the document after it has been issued.
Federal government unveils standardized COVID-19 vaccine passport for international travel
Federal government unveils standardized COVID-19 vaccine passport for international travel – Oct 21, 2021
The government worked “very closely” with airlines to ensure the certificate will also be “seamless” to verify, Trudeau said.
“It will be a step, for the vast majority of people, at the virtual check-in where they simply have to scan their QR code, and they will get a boarding pass that is clearly marked upon it ‘vaccination approved’ So there is no actual slowdown,” he said.
“It’s a single extra step on check in, in a digital way, but it will not be overly onerous for anyone in the process.
He added that when airline employees check the name and the gate number on the boarding pass, there will also be a “green check mark or whatever it is” that will tell them the vaccination requirements have been met.
Canadians who are travelling will have to show ID alongside their proof of vaccination certificate, according to the government’s website.
“Your name and date of birth will be checked against your other ID, such as your passport or status card,” it said.
“Your proof of vaccination and your passport or status card are separate documents and are not digitally connected. Your Canadian passport or status card does not contain vaccination information.”
Whether businesses choose to request ID alongside the vaccine certificates is up to them and the provinces where they’re located, according to Alexander Cohen, the press secretary for Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino.
“That’s entirely up to either the provinces or the individual business…because our role in this is creating something for international (use),” Cohen said.
Cohen added that he doesn’t foresee Canadian travellers running into any issues using these certificates on the global stage.
“We expect that it’s going to be accepted by all countries,” he said.
“Right now, every country that is accepting generally for travelers or visitors is accepting all proof of vaccination.”
Reaction rolls in to certificate rollout
Both industry and public health voices are applauding this latest step in vaccine certification. Beth Potter, who is the President and CEO of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, said the proof of vaccination system is “really good.”
“You’re not going to have to juggle,” Potter said.
“You know that you’ve got your vaccine certification, proof from whatever province or territory in Canada, and you can use it whenever you travel. And I think that’s fantastic.”
The one thing Potter was worried about seeing was a patchwork of systems across the country, she said.
“Not every business owner around the world may know where New Brunswick is or where the Yukon is,” she said.
“But they do know Canada, and so having that unifier, I think it’s incredibly important.”
New Brunswick premier says proof-of-vaccination QR system on track to come mid-November
New Brunswick premier says proof-of-vaccination QR system on track to come mid-November – Oct 21, 2021
A public health expert also agreed that the latest vaccine certification development is a welcome one. Julia Zarb, who is a professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, said the new certificate is “helpful.”
“It standardizes a template, a recognizable look and feel,” she said.
“There is a logo on it that is consistent across the board.”
While the certificate isn’t available in every single province just yet, Zarb said things are headed in the right direction.
“We need to get standardization, but it’s not something that will happen overnight, and anybody who’s worked in technology for a long time can tell you it’s never happened overnight, and we’ve had a lot of bumps and bruises trying to go down the road of thinking it might,” Zarb explained.
Potter said she’s hopeful that the implementation of this national system will be smooth.
“It’s free and it’s simple to use. So we’re hoping that this will be a relatively painless move,” she said.
“You know, as long as the vaccine is required, we wanted to make sure that the system that was put in place was one that is simple to understand, simple to use, but not onerous on the business owners and on the business employees.”
As for Canadians considering travel, Potter said she hopes this will give them that extra push.
“It’s getting safer to travel all the time, and proof of vaccination certification is another tool in everyone’s toolbox that they can use to feel confident that they can travel safely,” she said.
“We encourage Canadians to really start thinking about that next trip, whether it’s for leisure or for business travel, and to get back out there and explore our great country.”
The digital transformation is underway. In recent years, digital assets have started to mature, evidenced by increased global adoption by both retail and institutional investors. Against this backdrop, we believe that companies involved in the digital transformation of the global economy represents a long-term structural growth opportunity that is becoming more and more accessible to investors.
What Are Digital Assets?
The term “digital assets” encompasses a broad range of technology and applications, commonly referred to as blockchain or distributed ledger technology. Digital assets can take a variety of forms, and are not just limited to cryptocurrencies.
Companies at the Forefront of the Digital Asset Transformation
The companies involved in the digital transformation are distinctly different from digital assets themselves. Digital transformation companies may range from digital asset mining to hardware to exchanges that facilitate the trading of digital assets.
Digital transformation companies may engage in only one of these business lines, or they may engage in multiple, depending on their goals, capabilities and focus within the broader digital transformation space. Below are two quick examples to illustrate how different companies are generating digital transformation-related revenues.
Square*(SQ), the top weighted payment gateway company in the MVIS Global Digital Assets Equity Index, helps sellers start, run and grow their businesses. Investors and consumers can purchase cryptocurrency on Square’s popular CashApp. According to SEC filings, Square “recognizes revenue when customers purchase bitcoin and it is transferred to the customer’s account.” In 2020, that amounted to $4.57 billion in bitcoin-related revenues, an increase of 785% from the year before.1
Voyager Digital* (VYGR) focuses on enabling users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies across multiple exchanges in one account. According to SEC filings, Voyager “offers investors, developers and platform providers a fully functional suite of APIs and mobile apps to allow anyone the ability to invest, earn and secure multiple types of digital assets.” As of March 31, 2021, Voyager had over $2.4 billion in assets under management and 270,000 funded accounts.2
Digital Transformation Companies Reflect a Structural Growth Opportunity
The opportunity set of publicly traded, pure-play digital transformation companies is still young, but has grown in both size and revenues over the last few years. Despite underlying volatility in digital assets themselves, many publicly traded companies are investing heavily in new business lines to position themselves favorably as digital asset usage and adoption continues to accelerate.
The Growth of Publicly Traded Digital Transformation Companies (2012 – 2020)
Source: VanEck. Revenues and market caps reflect pure-play digital asset companies as defined by MVIS and included in the composition of the MVIS Global Digital Assets Equity Index on 3/31/21. See important disclosures and index descriptions at end.
The digital transformation opportunity set currently has fewer listed companies compared to more mature industries. However, we believe that as digital assets use cases and adoption grow over time, these early-mover companies may benefit, and that more digital transformation companies will go public.
Executive Order 14067 of March 9, 2022 Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1.Policy.Advances in digital and distributed ledger technology for financial services have led to dramatic growth in markets for digital assets, with profound implications for the protection of consumers, investors, and businesses, including data privacy and security; financial stability and systemic risk; crime; national security; the ability to exercise human rights; financial inclusion and equity; and energy demand and climate change. In November 2021, non–state issued digital assets reached a combined market capitalization of $3 trillion, up from approximately $14 billion in early November 2016. Monetary authorities globally are also exploring, and in some cases introducing, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). While many activities involving digital assets are within the scope of existing domestic laws and regulations, an area where the United States has been a global leader, growing development and adoption of digital assets and related innovations, as well as inconsistent controls to defend against certain key risks, necessitate an evolution and alignment of the United States Govern- ment approach to digital assets. The United States has an interest in respon- sible financial innovation, expanding access to safe and affordable financial services, and reducing the cost of domestic and cross-border funds transfers and payments, including through the continued modernization of public payment systems. We must take strong steps to reduce the risks that digital assets could pose to consumers, investors, and business protections; financial stability and financial system integrity; combating and preventing crime and illicit finance; national security; the ability to exercise human rights; financial inclusion and equity; and climate change and pollution. Sec. 2.Objectives.The principal policy objectives of the United States with respect to digital assets are as follows: (a) We must protect consumers, investors, and businesses in the United States. The unique and varied features of digital assets can pose significant financial risks to consumers, investors, and businesses if appropriate protec- tions are not in place. In the absence of sufficient oversight and standards, firms providing digital asset services may provide inadequate protections for sensitive financial data, custodial and other arrangements relating to customer assets and funds, or disclosures of risks associated with investment. Cybersecurity and market failures at major digital asset exchanges and trading platforms have resulted in billions of dollars in losses. The United States should ensure that safeguards are in place and promote the responsible development of digital assets to protect consumers, investors, and businesses; maintain privacy; and shield against arbitrary or unlawful surveillance, which can contribute to human rights abuses. (b) We must protect United States and global financial stability and mitigate systemic risk. Some digital asset trading platforms and service providers have grown rapidly in size and complexity and may not be subject to or in compliance with appropriate regulations or supervision. Digital asset issuers, exchanges and trading platforms, and intermediaries whose activities may increase risks to financial stability, should, as appropriate, be subject to and in compliance with regulatory and supervisory standards that govern traditional market infrastructures and financial firms, in line with the general...
A historic deal is set to see Justin Trudeau remain in the prime minister's office until at least 2025 in exchange for progress on key policies, if all goes to plan for the Liberals and NDP. The CBC's Aaron Wherry, Rosemary Barton, David Cochrane and Vassy Kapelos break down how the agreement came to be and how it might shake out.
Then, digital writer Christian Paas-Lang puts this deal into historical context, looking back at previous minority parliaments and how this one will stack up — should the deal last.
How the Liberals and New Democrats made a deal to preserve the minority government
Aaron Wherry, Rosemary Barton, David Cochrane and Vassy Kapelos
The residence at 7 Rideau Gate — a 19th-century home nestled between Rideau Hall and 24 Sussex in Ottawa's New Edinburgh neighborhood — is typically used as Canada's official guest house for visiting dignitaries and foreign leaders.
On March 14, an otherwise uneventful Monday in the nation's capital, it was also where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh came to a historic agreement between their parties during a three-hour meeting.
By the following Sunday, their officials had worked out the final wording of a tentative agreement. At 4 p.m. the next day, a note from the Privy Council Office alerted cabinet ministers to a cabinet meeting abruptly scheduled for that evening at 7:15 p.m. Liberal MPs were told of a virtual caucus meeting at 8:30 p.m., while NDP MPs were called to their own meeting for 8:45 p.m.
In those meetings, Liberals and New Democrats were let in on this week's big surprise, first reported by the CBC's Vassy Kapelos shortly after 9 p.m. on March 21: a confidence-and-supply agreement that would allow the Liberals to govern with NDP support until 2025, contingent on the implementation of a negotiated list of policies and priorities.
The key to making the deal work in practice might be found in the agreement's second sentence: "To ensure coordination on this arrangement, both Parties commit to a guiding principle of 'no surprises.'"
The deal itself should not have come as a complete surprise. Initial discussions between senior Liberals and New Democrats happened after last fall's election; Maclean's broke news of those conversations in October.
But those early talks did not deliver anything concrete and the conversation was more or less put aside.
'We just needed a little break'
"There was no animosity. We just needed a little break," a senior Liberal source with direct knowledge of the talks, speaking on condition they not be named, told the CBC this week.
Unlike similar confidence-and-supply agreements in Ontario, British Columbia and the Yukon — which came about very quickly after elections — there was no great urgency to the negotiations between Trudeau and Singh. The Liberal minority government was relatively secure and found the support it needed to pass several measures before the House of Commons adjourned in December.
Still, reports of possible collaboration were greeted enthusiastically in November by Erin O'Toole, who was still hanging on as Conservative leader. Faced with his own problems, O'Toole condemned what he described as a Liberal-NDP "coalition."
But unlike the negotiations between Jack Layton's NDP and Stephane Dion's Liberals in the feverish fall of 2008, these Liberal-NDP talks do not appear to have considered a coalition government at any point.
"We want to be independent enough to be able to be critical. We want to be able to oppose and to call for more," an NDP source, speaking on condition they not be named, said this week.
The discussions picked up again in the new year. As the Canadian Press reported this week, a phone call between Trudeau and Singh after the birth of Singh's daughter in January helped to get the ball rolling again.
Those discussions involved a small number of advisers — Trudeau's chief of staff Katie Telford and senior adviser Jeremy Broadhurst for the Liberals, Singh's chief of staff Jennifer Howard and NDP national director Anne McGrath for the New Democrats.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, left, and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, prepare for the start of the federal election English-language Leaders debate in Gatineau, Que., on Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)
The NDP source said that maintaining a tight circle lowered the likelihood of further leaks. Due to the pandemic, most of the discussions happened by phone or video conference.
The bulk of the deal seems to have come together in the last two weeks. An NDP source said the party wanted to have an agreement in place in time to influence the government's spring budget.
A Liberal source said that, as the March 14 discussion was concluding, news was also breaking of a NATO leaders' summit scheduled for Brussels this week. That meant a deal needed to be completed quickly if it was to be announced before the prime minister departed.
According to the Liberal source, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland was kept in the loop and other cabinet ministers were consulted about aspects that touched on their departments.
Agreeing on the 'blindingly obvious'
NDP officials reached out to people involved in the confidence-and-supply agreements signed in British Columbia in 2017 and Yukon in 2021. A Liberal source acknowledged that the B.C. deal was an important reference point. At least three of the primary negotiators also had firsthand experience — McGrath, Telford and Broadhurst were involved in the coalition talks in 2008.
The Liberal source argued that while the government was able to get its most important pieces of legislation through a divided House of Commons in the last Parliament, the process was so time-consuming that other bills — like those on conversion therapy and justice reform — fell by the wayside, even though the government knew it had the votes it needed.
"We don't have to see eye-to-eye on everything but can we at least find a way on the things that are blindingly obvious that we agree on?" the Liberal source said, explaining the motivation for a deal.
Then 2022 began and brought with it unforeseen events — an anti-vaccine mandate convoy protest occupying downtown Ottawa, followed by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Those events consumed more of the government's time. But the Liberal source also suggested that global turmoil was increasing the pressure on progressive politicians to show they had answers to concerns about the cost of living.
While the convoy was bringing O'Toole's time as Conservative leader to an end, it apparently was showing the Liberals and New Democrats that they could work with each other. While the NDP offered qualified approval in public for the government's use of the Emergencies Act to end the convoy protest, the two sides were speaking behind the scenes about the law's deployment and the Liberals coordinated briefings with government officials to answer the NDP's questions.
Building 'relationships'
An NDP source said the two parties worked together in a "very mature way" after the invocation of the Emergencies Act and were "honest and forthright" with each other.
"There was more contact between the leaders in discussions about how to deal with it," the source said in an interview. "And I think that helped build the relationships at the leader and staff level that helped us have these discussions [about an accord]."
While Trudeau and Singh clashed directly and sometimes fiercely during last fall's election, there was significant overlap in the parties' broad priorities on affordable housing, health care, climate change and reconciliation.
But the two parties couldn't agree on everything. Electoral reform was raised but dropped when it became clear the two sides weren't willing to abandon their preferred alternatives — proportional representation for the NDP, a ranked ballot for the Liberals. Instead, under the heading of "making democracy work for people," the Liberals and NDP agreed to revive a series of proposals for making it easier to vote.
Singh's NDP proposed expanding dental care in the 2019 and 2021 elections and the Trudeau government referred to dental care in its throne speech after the 2019 election, but the pandemic soon consumed all attention. The new accord became an opportunity to get something done.
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“YEAH I USE the pass. What should I be afraid of?” That’s Jack, a friend who works in state and city politics, responding to a poll I posted on Facebook about digital Covid-19 vaccination passports. “Are you using one?” it asked. “Why’d you download it instead of using the paper card? Do you have any fears about it?”
The responses were untroubled. Using it: mostly yes. “Now that theater is back, [New York] Excelsior passes are handy, since proof of vax is mandatory,” wrote a critic. A retired teacher noted that the app is more durable; paper “rumples” and gets lost.
And fears? Mostly no. I sent Jack a few off the top of my head: “Concerns about privacy, misuse of digitized biodata, lack of transparency, more info in hands of tech companies and the state in some unknown collaboration.”
“The state already had vax data,” he replied. “I never considered the rest. Which answers your question about whether people were worried, in my case.”
The digital Covid vaccination certification, or “passport,” is a mobile app that instantaneously affirms the vaccinated status, Covid test results, birth date, gender, and/or other identifiers of its holder. The information is usually mosaicked in a QR code, read by a proprietary scanner, and linked to a government registry. Led by New York, California, and Louisiana, as many as 30 states are rolling them out. The Biden administration announced last spring that it would wrangle them under national standards but so far it hasn’t. Internationally, the EU and a growing number of countries are adopting them, from repressive regimes like Bahrain to democracies like Denmark.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern heralded her country’s My Vaccine Pass as the keycard to the kingdom. “It’s actually really straightforward. If you’ve got a vaccine pass, you can do everything,” she announced, flashing a friendly shark grin. “Basically, that’s it.”
Not everybody is as nonchalant as Jack or as gung-ho as the PM. Twenty U.S. states have banned the passes, and hashtags like #NoVaccinePassports are proliferating on both sides of the Atlantic. “Spoiler alert,” tweeted British DJ, record producer, and anti-vaccine conspiracy-monger Lange. “They are not planning on removing vax passports once introduced. This is just the first step to get you conditioned to accepting government restrictions in your daily life via your mobile phone. This digital ID is going to expand to all aspects of your life.” Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called the passport “Biden’s mark of the beast.”
Normally I’d rather have the mark of the beast tattooed on my forehead than write these words, but: Marjorie is not entirely wrong.
I’ve been double-vaxxed and boosted. Needless to say, I want to do everything — or at least go to the movies. I’ve handed my paper vaccine card to a dozen gatekeepers, but I’m not getting New York’s Excelsior Pass. So I too am bartering shreds of my personal data for brief furloughs from the cage. I’m not pure.
Still, I’m troubled. What else am I — are we — trading away? There’s no doubt something like the vaccine passport is here for good, beyond Covid. In the end, we may decide we want this thing. But we should go into it with our eyes open.
EVIDENCE SUPPORTS THE detractors’ suspicions. Every government introducing a vaccine certification vows that their use is voluntary and no personal information will be held beyond its necessity. International bodies including the World Health Organization, the EU, and the International Chamber of Commerce are crafting regulatory standards. But governments are far from unanimous even on such basics as whether you need to show the pass to enter a bar — much less on how long and by whom our intimate information will be held, owned, or overseen.
New York, for one, is not expecting to mothball the technology when Covid wanes. Along with IBM, the designer, state bureaucrats are “exploring how the platform could be retrofitted to verify other types of records and credentials,” according to Vox. Experience with the Excelsior Pass has “accelerated our thinking about digital governments,” said the architect of the program. Will President Joe Biden use the passport to enforce his federal employee vaccine mandate? Then what? Once biodata are collected and filed, cautioned Hamid Kahn of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, which organizes in Los Angeles’s poorest and most policed communities, “there’s no delete button.”
When biometric data — bodily attributes digitized — are married to surveillance technology, both the potential for profit and the ambitions of the techno-futurists inflate without limit. One industry analyst predicts the global biometrics market will grow 15 percent annually, reaching nearly $105 billion by 2028. The British tech firm Onfido envisions a seamless EU-wide identify verification, or IDV, system for online gambling, telemedicine, car rentals, electronic voting, “and more.” Scientists in academe and industry are working on a global biodata repository. It would be naïve to assume these networks would not be linked.
In 2020, Onfido called its immunity passport in development the “linchpin of a new normality in a post-COVID19 society.” This year, the company’s chief privacy officer (an Orwellian job title if ever there was one) told Biometric Update that proven immunity to the virus du jour might become a “basic permission attribute.” A Swedish company has introduced a vaccine certification microchip that can be implanted under the skin.
What should I be afraid of?
I HAVE NO beef with data collection per se. Data are the lifeblood of what Michel Foucault called the biopolitical state, which governs by maximizing life and sustaining populations rather than by threatening violence and imposing death, as earlier regimes had done. Logically, one of the chief institutions of the biopolitical state is public health. A big part of public health is containing transmissible, fatal diseases: keeping illness from becoming epidemic, and epidemics from mushrooming into pandemics. In the last century, that job has been the ambit of epidemiology, the science of the spread of disease.
Epidemiologists have a lot of tools, but many are stored in the drawer marked “surveillance” — identifying the first cases of a superspreader like Ebola, avian flu, or Covid-19; tracing and testing the patients’ contacts; treating or isolating those who’ve been infected — and all the while gathering and analyzing data to predict the routes the pathogen will take and the bodies it will hijack to keep traveling. The data then go into larger databases to parse when the next murderous bug comes along.
Biodata can serve the public good — or they can give ammunition to eugenicists or evidence to the prosecutors of an HIV-positive person who failed to inform a lover of his serostatus, a felony in some states. In the biopolitical state, there is no bright line between benign and malign surveillance.
In the biopolitical state, there is no bright line between benign and malign surveillance.
Similarly, prevention and cure can look a lot like discipline and punishment. When the Trump administration squandered the opportunity to use less draconian epidemiological measures, the nation was pitched into extreme action: lockdown. Jeffrey Escoffier, a historian of sexuality, queer activism, and public health, was alarmed. Quarantine is a grave incursion on liberty, he told me. During the two decades he served as director of health media and marketing for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene — “propaganda minister for the biopolitical state” — the decision to impose it on even one person was taken with caution. But lock up everyone? Self-isolation is sometimes necessary. It is also the carceral function of the health-protecting state; the doctor moonlights as a prison warden.
During Italy’s lockdown, the philosopher Giorgio Agamben blogged about the “techno-medical despotism” so focused on eliminating the risk of contagion to preserve mere biological existence — what he calls “bare life” — that it prohibited everything that makes human society meaningful, from dating to democracy. “How could we have accepted,” he asked in a New York Times interview, “in the name of a risk that we couldn’t even quantify, not only that the people who are dear to us … should have to die alone but also — and this is something that had never happened before in all of history from Antigone to today — that their corpses should be burned without a funeral?” Actually it has happened before: during the plagues of the Middle Ages, according to Foucault, the birthplace of the biopolitical state.
But we don’t have to look back that far to see a wish for perfect security trumping everything else that matters. The surveillance technologies of the War on Contagion are inherited from the War on Terror, and the software is encoded with the same forever-war mentality: Both fight risk rather than actual threat. When the enemy is protean, like suicide bombers and viruses, the calculation of risk is easily manipulated and often subjective. My partner and I used to argue about whether to wash the milk cartons from the supermarket. Now we listen to delphic sentences like this one, from Chief White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci speaking of the omicron variant on NPR: “You have so many cases it essentially obviates any diminution of the severity, because of the quantitative number of cases that you’ll get with such a highly transmissible virus.” Then we Google the latest statistics and argue about whether to eat out.
Risk cloaked in statistics is a ghost in a suit. It starts to resemble a person. Who is the terrorist? Who is the Covid carrier? Among the contradictions of the pandemic is that collective safety requires honesty and mutual trust, yet the expression of that trust is vigilant mutual suspicion. The best bet is to fear everyone.
The vaccination passport seems to solve this problem, replacing suspicion with certainty. But in admitting the vaccinated and deporting the unvaccinated, it also sorts the good biocitizen from the outlaw. The rhetoric of contagion has long mobilized xenophobia and legitimized racist and eugenicist citizenship and immigration policies (think Donald Trump’s “Chinese virus”). American University historian Alan M. Kraut calls this “medicalized nativism.”
“Securing borders is all about fear. The action of fear is to restrict movement.”
“Passports have everything to do with borders,” says Jenell Johnson, associate professor of rhetoric, politics, and culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a co-editor of “Biocitizenship: The Politics of Bodies, Governance, and Power.” “Securing borders is all about fear. The action of fear is to restrict movement. The passport allows for movement in both physical and economic ways. It also immediately suggests belonging — the people who belong and people who don’t.”
A pocket-size dossier of one’s “attributes of permission” affords its holder a sense of inclusion, and thus protection from a menacing world. My Facebook friends told me as much. “What I like about Excelsior is the extra level of confirmation it offers — the info individuals input is checked against a database,” responded one woman. “Basic steps to avoid fraud make me feel better about being in a venue with similarly vaccinated and vetted people.” In fact the apps are subject to fraud, glitches, and haphazard use; they may provide more security theater than security. Anyway, the omicron variant is infecting everyone, vaccinated or not. But even skeptics are buying the ticket. Wrote one: “I’d rather hand over my personal info to some corporation than eat [in a restaurant] next to the unvaccinated.”
I too want to eat in a restaurant, away from the unvaccinated. But to be honest, it’s not just because I don’t want to get sick. It’s because I despise them — whoever they are — the sans-papiers. I am not proud of this.
“WE ARE GOING to be living in pandemic societies for the rest of our lives,” predicted Escoffier, the historian. “What does this mean politically?” I wondered: Can public health kill public life?
Perhaps it was inevitable that in a nation where mutuality is in splinters, isolation turned from prescription to preference. Workers reconsidered the rewards of in-person colleagueship and deemed them not worth the commute. Shopkeepers slid the credit card reader forward, recoiling from accidental touch. We all withdrew further into our screens. Human connection squeezed further into digital pathways patrolled by corporations. With the decline of casual social intercourse in public spaces we are unlearning the instincts and emotions — the very notion — of the social. Babies are starting life without ever seeing a stranger’s smile.
Omicron is leapfrogging from body to body. The virus is no doubt busily mutating. Now the corporate digital police are reinforced by agents of the biopolitical state, armed with scanners. They read our QR codes and unlock our cells. Who does not want out?
The vaccine passport embodies the contradictions of the pandemic that birthed it. It guards borders, divides us from them. It also facilitates travel, and travel is an antidote to tribalism. In either case, it is not going away. Therefore, if it is indeed the prototype linchpin of a future global, digital hyper-surveillance apparatus, we must demand that it be universally accessible, publicly owned and regulated, its workings transparent, and its uses stringently defined.
For the moment, the vaccine pass is allowing us to repopulate the third spaces and revitalize the public square, where accidental touch accustoms us to tolerance and minor conflict conditions us for democratic discourse. Technologies encode their makers’ and users’ values. This one must serve the survival of the social.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to deliver remarks and hold a media availability Thursday in response to the ongoing "military operation" by Russia taking place in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin defied international pressure and launched a wide-ranging attack on Ukraine Thursday, telling the West not to intervene in what appeared to be the beginning of a new conflict in Europe. Putin said in an early morning televised speech the “special military operation,” which he said would occur in eastern Ukraine, was in response to Ukrainian threats while insisting Russia doesn’t have a goal to occupy the country. As of mid-morning Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russian forces are attempting to take the Chernobyl nuclear plant. The Russian military also says it has destroyed 74 Ukrainian facilities, including 11 air bases.
Has there been a massive exodus of capital out of the Canadian financial system?
A few obscure but interesting data-points seem to indicate Justin Trudeau’s unprecedented use of the federal government and intelligence apparatus to target the bank accounts of Canadian citizens has just created a serious problem for their financial institutions.
If I was a betting person, I would bet half my stake that something very serious is happening in the background of the Canadian financial system, and it appears the leaders inside government, as well as leaders in the international financial community, are reacting and trying to keep things quiet. Stick with me on this and stay elevated…
BACKGROUND – When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he was invoking the Emergency War Measures Act to seize bank accounts and block access to the financial system for people who were arbitrarily deemed as terrorists to the interest of the Canadian government, i.e. the Freedom Protest group writ large, many people immediately thought about the consequences of a government taking such action.
Indeed, the first response to many who witnessed the gleeful declarations of the Canadian government as they expressed their intent to utilize their emergency power, was that this was seriously going to undermine faith and confidence in the Canadian financial systems. The RCMP is the Canadian equivalent of the FBI.
If the government can work with the RCMP to target people based on an arbitrary political decree, and then control your bank account while simultaneously giving financial institutions liability protection for their participation, the confidence in the banking system is immediately undermined.
What might seem like a great tool for political punishment has long term consequences, especially if people start withdrawing their money and/or shifting the placement of their investments to more secure locations away from the reach of the Canadian government. Considering the rules of fractional banking and deposits, it doesn’t take many withdrawals before the banks have serious issues.
DATA POINTS – In addition to being Justin Trudeau’s deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland is also the Finance Minister of Canada. Yesterday, a very twitchy, nervous and gasping for breath Freeland was noted in a very agitated state when she attended the press conference of her boss. Factually you can watch the video and see how stressed she was and incapable of keeping herself stable [SEE HERE].
Watch that video from the perspective that someone in the international financial world, IMF, World Bank or other affiliate in the world of collective finance has just had a very serious talk with Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.
♦ Shortly after that very awkward performance, Finance Minister Freeland’s assistant deputy, Isabelle Jacques, informed a parliamentary committee that all bank accounts frozen by the federal government’s use of the Emergency Act, were immediately being unfrozen.
( VIA CBC ) – […] More than 200 bank accounts worth nearly $8 million were frozen when the federal government used emergency powers to end a massive protest occupation of downtown Ottawa. Federal officials report most of the accounts are now in the process of being released, a parliamentary committee heard Tuesday.
Isabelle Jacques, assistant deputy minister of finance, told a committee of MPs that up to 210 bank accounts holding about $7.8 million were frozen under the financial measures contained in the Emergencies Act. (read more)
Obviously, many people realized from the outset what the Canadian government had done was tenuously legal at best, provided no legal due process or right of challenge, and likely would not pass any serious legal scrutiny. Unfortunately, in the echo chamber that is far-left liberalism, such matters are not as important as the ideological political motives; but there are people who realize the consequences of power-lust in this application.
Without a doubt, just as you were likely stunned, amazed and then angered by the financial punishment declared by Trudeau, there are people aligned with Trudeau –outside his government– who could see a bigger picture of consequence than those inside the echo chamber.
Central banking finance ministers around the world obviously would pay close attention to what Trudeau just announced, and there are certainly people in the World Economic Forum (WEF) group, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and central bankers who would not be happy about the Canadian government showing just how easy it is to snatch money out of the hands of citizens.
These tools of citizen control are things well known to the central bankers and control agents of finance, but they are never spoken about in polite company – let alone publicized, promoted and openly bragged about.
Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland essentially broke the financial code of Omerta, by highlighting how easy it is for government to seize your bank accounts, credit cards, retirement accounts, insurance, mortgages, loan access and cut you off from money.
Worse yet, the short-sighted Canadian government via Minister Freeland announced their ability to control cryptocurrency exchanges in their country and block access within a financial mechanism that exists almost entirely as an insurance policy and hedge against the exact actions the government was taking.
♦ A very nervous Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland, appears with Trudeau to talk about Ukraine.
♦ Freeland’s underling, Deputy Minister Jacques, is simultaneously telling parliament the bank accounts are being unfrozen.
♦ The CBC then reports that RCMP officials are taking a 180° reversal in position, about asset seizures.
Then there’s this supportive data-point from Jordan Peterson (Direct Rumble Link):
.
Is the Canadian government now experiencing a serious financial problem as the result of Trudeau and Freeland’s totalitarian lust for power and use of finance to crush their political opposition?
Apply Occam’s Razor here and the result is akin to: ‘How couldn’t they“.
Once that tool is deployed, there’s no putting the toothpaste back into the tube.
No, today it has taken on a much more powerful and insidious form through technology by The Great Corrallingof humanity into an infrastructure whereby our movement, banking, purchasing, and health care are all digitally fused together. We are only a short step away from the currency becoming digitized — which has already begun in China and soon, India.[9]
It used to be that if an activist were going to go participate in something and the Chinese Communist Party wanted to prevent them from leaving or prevent them from partaking in something, they would send a bunch of thugs to go and prevent them from going. But now, what they can do is on a computer, they can change the status — vaccination status or other health information — to make it so they can’t even buy a plane ticket or a train ticket to go somewhere. —Chen Guangcheng, Ibid.
Once this is tied to your vaccine passport, your ability to buy and sell, ie. access to your bank account, enter businesses and so forth will depend on whether you are fully “vaxxed” or not. It’s already happening! I can’t sit down for a cup of coffee in my local town, even though I’ve had COVID, am healthy, and fully immune. This is segregation! This is discrimination! This is immoral!
I can’t say it more forcefully enough, this is literaly the end of human liberty in the West if this plan [for vaccine passports] unfolds as planned. —Dr. Naomi Wolfe, Following the Science?, 59:04
We cannot let freedom die with this generation. —Army Major Stephen Chledowski, Canadian soldier; February 11th, 2022
We are approaching the final hours… Our future is quite literally, freedom or tyranny… —Robert G., a concerned Canadian (from Telegram)
Would that all men would judge of the tree by its fruit, and would acknowledge the seed and origin of the evils which press upon us, and of the dangers that are impending! We have to deal with a deceitful and crafty enemy, who, gratifying the ears of people and of princes, has ensnared them by smooth speeches and by adulation. —POPE LEO XIII, Humanus Genus, n. 28
IT has been an emotional roller-coaster this week for citizens across the world who, after two years of repeated falsehoods, demonstrably flawed science,[1] and experimentation on their bodies, have risen up against their governments. Ironically, Canada — the one country most known for its passiveness and proclivity for political correctness — is leading the charge against the medical tyranny being imposed on their citizens. And governments have done everything in their power to vilify these people as “hateful”, “violent”, “racist”, etc..[2] But thousands of videos and testimonies from eyewitnesses have debunked the accusations of CBC and the rest of the establishment media that have attempted to demonize the entire movement by the behavior of literally a few individuals.[3] In France, the same tactic is being rolled out by its government:
This is not the Freedom Convoy. It is the convoy of shame and selfishness. These are not patriots but people who are irresponsible. It is paradoxical to claim to be in favor of freedom when the idea is to block people’s lives. —Clément Beaune, French state secretary for European Affairs; twitter.com
What a paradox that the very governments that enacted unprecedented and immoral lockdowns,[4] banned children from playing together and pursuing their dreams, destroyed countless businesses and lives and bitterly divided communities — for a virus with a survival rate now in line with the flu…[5] are preaching about freedom. The hypocrisy and callousness is breathtaking. And “the science” stands squarely on the side of the protesters.
…lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument. —John Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, “A Literature Review and Meta-Anlaysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality”, Herby, Jonung and Hanke; January 2022, sites.krieger.jhu.edu
The Canadian “lockdown” response will kill at least 10 times more than it might have saved from the actual virus, COVID-19. The unconscionable use of fear during an emergency, to ensure compliance, has caused a breach in confidence in government that will last a decade or more. The damage to our democracy will last at least a generation. —David Redman, M.Eng., July 2021, page 5, “Canada’s Deadly Response to COVID-19”
Make no mistake: if your government is telling you that, in order to participate in society, you must henceforth take whatever drug cocktail they have purchased from mega pharmaceutical corporations — you are living in tyranny.
No pope, no bishop, no politician, no medical official, no dictator, and certainly no family member, has the right to force, guilt, or shame an injection into your body. Ever.
…the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. —Nuremberg Code; Shuster E. Fifty years later: The significance of the Nuremberg code. New England Journal of Medicine. 1997; 337:1436-1440
…vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary. — “Note on the morality of using some anti-Covid-19 vaccines”, n. 6; vatican.va
Research or experimentation on the human being cannot legitimate acts that are in themselves contrary to the dignity of persons and to the moral law. Experimentation on human beings is not morally legitimate if it exposes the subject’s life or physical and psychological integrity to disproportionate or avoidable risks. —Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2295
Even if it is couched in the words that it is an “act of love”, it cannot be forced. We have a word for an act of love that is forced: rape. You are in denial if you believe that, for the rest of your life, endless boosters and injections are “for the common good.” This is a lie, and if you believe it, you need to pray and fast to be untangled from this “mass formation psychosis”[6] — especially when the short-term data reveals that such injections are unquestionably devastating for not a few[7] and the long-term effects for all are still unknown (though the late Nobel laureate, Dr. Luc Montagnier, has something to say about that here). In other words, if you weren’t harmed thus far, to deliberately ignore the devastation this has wrought on millions is not an act of love but truly “selfish”.[8]
The New Totalitarianism
We must get it out of our minds that jackboots and tanks rolling up and down our streets are the only “true” totalitarianism.
A Chinese Communist-style social credit system is “happening at our doorsteps now in the United States and in Europe.” —Chen Guangcheng, human rights lawyer and Chinese dissident; February 11th, 2022, lifesitenews.com
No, today it has taken on a much more powerful and insidious form through technology by The Great Corrallingof humanity into an infrastructure whereby our movement, banking, purchasing, and health care are all digitally fused together. We are only a short step away from the currency becoming digitized — which has already begun in China and soon, India.[9]
It used to be that if an activist were going to go participate in something and the Chinese Communist Party wanted to prevent them from leaving or prevent them from partaking in something, they would send a bunch of thugs to go and prevent them from going. But now, what they can do is on a computer, they can change the status — vaccination status or other health information — to make it so they can’t even buy a plane ticket or a train ticket to go somewhere. —Chen Guangcheng, Ibid.
Once this is tied to your vaccine passport, your ability to buy and sell, ie. access to your bank account, enter businesses and so forth will depend on whether you are fully “vaxxed” or not. It’s already happening! I can’t sit down for a cup of coffee in my local town, even though I’ve had COVID, am healthy, and fully immune. This is segregation! This is discrimination! This is immoral!
I can’t say it more forcefully enough, this is literaly the end of human liberty in the West if this plan [for vaccine passports] unfolds as planned. —Dr. Naomi Wolfe, Following the Science?, 59:04
And God forgive our bishops for their incomprehensible silence, if not complicity, while these mounting injustices have taken place beneath their eyes.[10] At last, a Vatican correspondent has broken ranks with the silence of the majority of the Catholic media and spoken the truth:
Church leaders, beginning with Pope Francis and the Vatican, have been silent and complicit in the face of grave wrongs committed over the past two years… In the case of the Vatican, it has committed these injustices on its own territory, enforcing some of the world’s strictest vaccine mandates even when evidence mounts that these shots pose considerable health risks, especially for young people, and the threat of the virus, once serious according to scientific modelling, recedes.
Having long washed its hands of any concern over the jabs being abortion-tainted, the Vatican unquestioningly went along with the powers-that-be followed by most of the world’s bishops. That might have been understandable at first but this position did not change.
Never mind the gross injustices, unnecessary hardships, and suffering caused to millions by the madness of lockdowns and vaccine mandates.
The Church’s leaders remained silent on the policies, but not before becoming complicit: committing injustices against the souls of their flocks by closing churches for long periods, enforcing restrictions on worship, banning the unvaccinated from the sacraments in some cases, and most recently backing grossly unjust, state-sanctioned vaccine mandates.
The sheep felt abandoned by their shepherds as their bishops fixed their gaze on physical health and mass groupthink rather than the eternal well-being of souls and common sense — a this-worldly orientation that has been in the making for decades but which came of age during COVID.
History will not look kindly on the leaders of the Church during this period, even less so if they remain silent and complicit as more details of unjust and dishonest public health policies of the past two years continue to emerge. —Edward Pentin, “The Deafening Silence and Grievous Complicity of Church Leaders During Covid”, February 5th, 2022
Indeed, as Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J. wrote before the Nazi’s executed him:
At some future date the honest historian will have some bitter things to say about the contribution of the Churches to the creation of the mass mind, of collectivism, dictatorships and so on. —Fr. Alfred Delp, SJ, Prison Writings (Orbis Books), pp. xxxi-xxxii
This is the last stand for freedom in the West. If Western leaders prevail and crush the freedom movement and succeed with their mandates and passports, liberty will be gone — for the “vaxxed” and “unvaxxed” alike. And then, we will literally be living the words of St. John:
…all nations were led astray by your sorcery. (Rev 18:23; the Greek word for sorcery is φαρμακείᾳ (pharmakeia) — “the use of medicine, drugs or spells.”)
The attempts by politicians to smear the characters of the hundreds of millions of Canadians, French, Australians, Russians, and others who have risen up against this global takeover is disgusting and reprehensible — and time will prove that those who opposed them were on the wrong side of both history and science.[11] Today, three top Canadian doctors and scientists arranged a meeting with Canadian health officials to discuss the data of the current mass vaccination.[12] But the health officials didn’t show up. Why? The answer is obvious. The data completely upends their careful, brilliant, but failed narrative.[13]
Revolution in the Church
In the meantime, another battle is taking place within the Church herself — an equally diabolical revolution. Just as the pandemic has completely turned the scientific-medical paradigm upside down…
The post-Covid pseudo-medical order has not only destroyed the medical paradigm I faithfully practised as a medical doctor last year… it has inverted it. I do not recognize the government apocalypse in my medical reality. The breath-taking speed and ruthless efficiency with which the media-industrial complex have co-opted our medical wisdom, democracy and government to usher in this new medical order is a revolutionary act. —an anonymous U.K. physician known as “The Covid Physician”
…so too, apostate prelates, clearly in contradiction of Catholic teaching, are attempting to destroy the moral foundations of the Church. Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, the relator general of the unfolding Synod on Synodality, has outright stated that the Church’s teaching on homosexuality “is false” and that its teaching on human sexuality that is ordered toward conjugal love between husband and wife, an image of Trinitarian life — is fundamentally flawed.[14] Here, we are seeing the prophetic warning of Pope Leo XIII finally reaching its fulfillment in our times: the attempted overthrow of both the social and Christian order:
Now, the masonic sect produces fruits that are pernicious and of the bitterest savour. For, from what We have above most clearly shown, that which is their ultimate purpose forces itself into view — namely, the utter overthrow of that whole religious and political order of the world which the Christian teaching has produced, and the substitution of a new state of things in accordance with their ideas, of which the foundations and laws shall be drawn from mere naturalism. —Humanum Genus, April 20th, 1884; n. 10
You are alive, born for these times, to witness what St. John Paul II called “the final confrontation” of this era. And as usual, God has raised up the anawim, the little ones, the obscure to raise the battle cry. Truckers. Farmers. Commoners. You and me — Our Lady’s Little Rabble.
It is the last stand. It is the hour for us to prepare to give our lives for the sake of the Gospel, for the sake of truth. What an honor and privilege to give everything to Jesus, who gave everything for us.
There are values which must never be abandoned for a greater value and even surpass the preservation of physical life. There is martyrdom. God is (about) more than mere physical survival. A life that would be bought by the denial of God, a life that is based on a final lie, is a non-life. Martyrdom is a basic category of Christian existence. The fact that martyrdom is no longer morally necessary in the theory advocated by Böckle and many others shows that the very essence of Christianity is at stake here… Today’s Church is more than ever a “Church of the Martyrs” and thus a witness to the living God. —EMERITUS POPE BENEDICT XVI, Essay: ‘The Church and the scandal of sexual abuse’;Catholic News Agency, April 10th, 2019
This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel. It is the time to preach it from the rooftops. —POPE SAINT JOHN PAUL II, Homily, Cherry Creek State Park Homily, Denver, Colorado, August 15th, 1993; vatican.va
Major Stephen Chledowski breaks ranks with a powerful statement:
February 11th, 2022
Now on Telegram. Click:
Follow Mark and the daily “signs of the times” on MeWe:
World-renowned bio-statistician and epidemiologist, Prof. John Iannodis of Standford University, published a paper on the infection fatality rate of COVID-19. Here are the age-stratified statistics:
0-19: .0027% (or a survival rate of 99.9973%) 20-29 .014% (or a survival rate of 99.986%) 30-39 .031% (or a survival rate of 99.969%) 40-49 .082% (or a survival rate of 99.918%) 50-59 .27% (or a survival rate of 99.73%) 60-69 .59% (or a survival rate of 99.31%) (Source: medrxiv.org)
…far lower than originally feared and no different to severe flu. —Dr. Eshani M King, November 13th, 2020; bmj.com
![[image of the Liberal MP Randeep Sarai in the House of Commons]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEhfyF8DSI-gwosWP8A46aeSiKWNQJi31R2G_WNB2gr-Ssuk9MX_EgLiBnRXTYRbkCLtshyPOl2hYcRU61jxOqMq1LsY85TnIparHtLjg2YG8sfk-pJ4wZWJGm06pVQ_brgvoIxIXrwfuAAPZIHbMOYqzWIgcQ49d7upxPSdk-e4_lfMVz8n6yuJi_Wwg2doCrbe-eGz7qq_OGFwnpqdne4A5La2lcw=s0-d-e1-ft&w=BZRuRFjpdujd8SnJQ3fPyTzxL0so)
DATA POINTS – In addition to being Justin Trudeau’s deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland is also the Finance Minister of Canada. Yesterday, a very twitchy, nervous and gasping for breath Freeland was noted in a very agitated state when she attended the press conference of her boss. Factually you can watch the video and see how stressed she was and incapable of keeping herself stable [
The Mallett Clan riding for freedom…
endless boosters and injections are “for the common good.” This is a lie, and if you believe it, you need to pray and fast to be untangled from this “mass formation psychosis”
No, today it has taken on a much more powerful and insidious form through technology by 
Having long washed its hands of any concern over the jabs being abortion-tainted, the Vatican unquestioningly went along with the powers-that-be followed by most of the world’s bishops. That might have been understandable at first but this position did not change.
relator general of the unfolding Synod on Synodality, has outright stated that the Church’s teaching on homosexuality “is false” and that its teaching on human sexuality that is ordered toward conjugal love between husband and wife, an image of Trinitarian life — is fundamentally flawed.
