Viral pandemic a convenient linchpin for economic collapse

By Brandon Smith via Bob Livingston's Personal Liberty Alerts, Jan. 29 at 11:03 a.m.

A global pandemic, whether a natural event or deliberately engineered, actually serves the purposes of the globalists. First as a distraction. The public, overcome with fears of an invisible force of nature that can possibly kill them at any moment, will probably forget all about the much bigger threat to their life, liberty and future — the subsequent economic collapse that a pandemic can trigger.

Some delusionally ignorant assumptions are that this was caused by people "eating bats" but there's no evidence for this; on the contrary the city of Wuhan where the virus outbreak began is the home of not one but two level 4 biohazard labs. In 2017, scientists outside of China warned that these labs were not secure and that a virus might escape one of the facilities.

https://meaww.com/wuhan-coronavirus-warned-2017-lab-wuhan-deadly-diseases-escape-lab-level-4-safety-scientists

There is a strong possibility that this event was created intentionally. The virus itself has certain hallmarks of being engineered and the current strain is probably derived from the one the Chinese stole a year ago from the liberal moron Canadian government's lab in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

http://greatgameindia.com/chinese-researchers-caught-stealing-coronavirus-from-canadian-lab/

I have a hard time ignoring this strange "coincidence" in favor of the idea that the virus was launched by chance due to the weird diets of central Chinese people. The coronavirus was gestated and created in a lab, not in someone's bat and snake salad.

Some delusively think a viral threat will not strike the West, or at least, not the U.S. They tpresume they are untouchable and that the system will always avert crisis. Arguments range from "screening of travelers is too comprehensive to allow the virus to spread here" and "as long as the virus destroys China, who cares?" This is stupid. The virus is already here. It was circulating through China for at least a few weeks before it was ever addressed by government authorities or the CDC. It also is reported to be asymptomatic, which means it remains dormant yet also contagious for up to two weeks before symptoms become visible.

See also 'Globalists Only Need One More Major Event To Finish Sabotaging The Economy.' To summarize the situation:

https://www.alt-market.com/articles/3779-globalists-only-need-one-more-major-event-to-finish-sabotaging-the-economy

The globalist establishment has created the largest financial bubble in modern history through central bank stimulus, inflating a highly unstable artificial rally in markets while also creating new highs in national debt, corporate debt and consumer debt. The economic fundamentals have been sending alarms for the past two years, and the 'Everything Bubble' is showing signs of implosion. It is only a matter of time before the farce collapses by itself. The globalists need scapegoats, but they also need an event or wave of events so distracting that people will not be able to discern what really happened a hundred years from now.

The reason why globalists want a collapse is simple — order out of chaos. They need crisis in order to manipulate the masses into accepting total centralization, a global monetary system and global governance. They are also rabid believers in eugenics and population reduction. At the very least, a global pandemic is a useful happenstance for them; but the timing of the coronavirus event also suggests their potential involvement, as it comes right as the implosion of the Everything Bubble was accelerating.

The fact that China has now quarantined over 50 million people in 16 cities suggests the viral danger is much higher than they have admitted. If it does kill a large number of people, and if the Chinese government's response is any indication, it could result in global martial law. With many economies including the U.S. economy already in a precarious balancing act of historic debt vs. crashing demand and useless central bank repo market intervention, there is little chance that the system can withstand such a tsunami.

Make no mistake, the crash has already begun, whether the virus hits the U.S. hard or not. The only question is, will this be the trigger event that accelerates the collapse process that is already in motion?

The U.S. and China are still currently in the middle of a trade war. The Phase 1 deal was always a joke, because it demands that China quadruple its purchases from the U.S. within the next 1-2 years. This was never going to happen, but the false hope (along with corporate stock buybacks) lifted global stocks out of reversal. Now, there is no chance that China will meet the requirements of the Phase 1 deal and that will soon become evident, as China's economy will grind down under the weight of the pandemic.

If Trump continues tariffs against a nation in the state of a viral emergency he will look like a monster (which is his job as a globalist puppet pretending to be a conservative nationalist). In the meantime, global trade becomes muddled and last structural supports of the system snap in half.

It is still hard to say with certainty, but this appears to be the "black swan" that the globalists were waiting for (or planning). Preparing for a viral event is recommended, but do not forget about the economic disaster that will inevitably follow if the coronavirus continues to spread.

The Globalist Enemedia "4th Estate" Are ALL Now 5th Columnists!

Recently, Americans have been subjected to wall-to-wall media coverage of congressional Democrats’ pretend impeachment of President Donald Trump, led by Rep. Adam Schiff (aka “Pencil Neck”).

From morning to late evening, day after day, they have monotonously argued that Trump – who was duly elected by the American people and, despite the unending coup against him, has become one of the most consequential and successful presidents of our lifetime – absolutely MUST be removed from office immediately. Waiting a few months until November’s election, they insist, would be dangerous!

Question: What are normal Americans to make of the never-ending attempts by bug-eyed crazies like Pelosi, Schiff, Maxine Waters and other “leaders” to overturn the constitutional election of a president by any means possible?

Remember, these are the same people whose own presidential candidates now take turns seeing who can be the most deranged, with Bernie Sanders insisting terrorists must be allowed to vote, Elizabeth Warren claiming she’ll fill her presidential Cabinet with “women and non-binary people,” Joe Biden continually unaware of what state he’s in, and all of them lying continually.

These are the same people who say a beautiful human child can be murdered right up to the very moment of birth – and if you disagree, you’re immoral and hate women.

These are the same people who want to shut down America’s oil, gas and coal industries, which would inevitably plunge the nation into depression – and if you disagree, you want to destroy the planet.

These are the same people who insist there are dozens of different genders and that women must allow men to use their locker rooms, bathrooms and showers and dominate their athletic competitions – and if you disagree, you’re a bigot.

These are the same people who want to eliminate America's borders and dismantle her law enforcement agencies, while importing as many immigrants as possible from terror-hotbed countries into the U.S., and who insist on giving them all free cradle-to-grave health care – paid for by you. And if you disagree, you’re a racist.

So, why has today’s Democratic Party gone stark, raving mad?

Conservative analysts sometimes point to factors like these:

Hatred of Trump: Yes, they all loathe trump – and hate makes you think, say and do crazy things.

Toxic ideology: Yes, the “woke” identity-politics ideology that consumes today's left is arrogant, contemptuous of history and religiously devoted to socialism – despite socialism’s stunning 100 percent failure rate, most recently in oil-rich Venezuela where inflation has been around 1 million percent and there's no toilet paper.

Emotional thinking: Yes, multiple peer-reviewed studies confirm that liberals think more emotionally while conservatives think more logically in arriving at policy ideas.

Hatred of America: Yes, the same leftists who brand Trump and Republicans as racist and immoral tend also to feel the same way about their own nation – seeing America as a fundamentally racist, immoral country.

So, that is WHAT has happened to many in today’s America. But WHY has it happened? WHY have we allowed our colleges and universities to become Marxist indoctrination centers? WHY is abortion-on-demand still legal in America? WHY have the forces of the left been able to get away with continually lying to the American people about virtually everything, all in order to gain ever more power?

WHY have they not been held to account? That’s the big question.

The big culprit in all of this – largely responsible for the shameful downward transformation of America in our lifetime – is THE NEWS MEDIA. Today’s news media is largely a hoax. While pretending to be “objective, professional journalists,” most “mainstream” news people, in reality, are craven, unprincipled and utterly self-seeking propagandists for the Democratic Party.

With that in mind, consider that we are rapidly approaching a point of no return in our country this November. If one of the Democratic Party’s deranged and corrupt candidates – including Hillary Clinton, who could parachute into a deadlocked convention this summer – becomes president in a few months, say goodbye to America.

Jefferson was right when he wrote to Lafayette in 1823, "The only security of all is in a free press."

- David Kupelian -

Will American cities ‘burn’ this election year?

All across America, “fucking cities will burn” if Bernie Sanders doesn’t become the Democratic presidential nominee. That’s according to a Sanders campaign organizer caught this week on hidden camera by Project Veritas. A second Sanders organizer advocated, on hidden camera, that Trump supporters be thrown en masse into "gulags" – his word – for re-education, "to teach you to not be a fucking Nazi."

Nice.

Sanders claims to be a "democratic socialist," whatever that is. But he talks like a perpetually enraged hard-core communist and his campaign workers sound a little like Pol Pot "killing fields" revolutionaries.

And yet, the latest polls show Bernie Sanders has a VERY good chance of becoming the Democrats’ presidential standard-bearer in a few months!

Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats are finally pushing forward with their outrageously idiotic impeachment of a truly good president, Donald Trump. Make no mistake: The damage being done to our nation by the Democrats’ never-ending coup d’etat, starting with “Trump colluded with Putin to steal the election from Hillary!” and continuing into the present with this fake and cynical “impeachment,” is incalculable.

Before we know it, in less than 300 days, Election Day will be here and our nation’s future will be dramatically determined for a generation, and maybe permanently.

President Trump, the great disrupter of our permanent ruling class has been a remarkably good president, championing smart, bold and moral foreign and domestic policies.

Arrayed against Trump is the most bizarre, dysfunctional, dishonest and frankly insane array of contenders ever assembled in an American presidential primary contest. Besides Sanders (who Rush Limbaugh described as “an aging hippie communist”), there’s Joe Biden, on the wrong side of almost every issue through his long political career and who now continually regales audiences with tall tales (as in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”) of his various heroic adventures nobody ever heard of before. And there’s Pete Buttigieg, the openly gay candidate in a same-sex marriage who claims to perfectly follow the Bible (unlike evil Republicans), even though Scripture unapologetically describes homosexual acts with the words “detestable” and “abomination.” Oops. Then there's Elizabeth Warren, the former Indian whose policies for America would be instantly suicidal if adopted and who lies as easily as breathing – actually more easily.

If one of these people (or their secret weapon, Hillary Clinton) becomes president in a few months, say goodbye to America.

So it’s pretty important to understand how one of these staggeringly deranged candidates could possibly win November’s election, especially in light of the remarkably successful presidency of Donald Trump.

Consider that the entire "mainstream news media" serves the Democratic Party. As does the entire "Deep State" that comprises the permanent governing class in Washington, D.C. As does the tremendously influential entertainment industry. As does America's terrible educational system, controlled entirely by the left, busily indoctrinating the next generation of Americans leftward while simultaneously getting them hooked on massive college debt, setting them up to favor the socialist candidate who promises to relieve them of their crushing debt burden.

Finally, though largely out of view, there’s the far-left cabal that has taken over the internet in the last few years. Just this week it was announced that Google is now a ONE TRILLION DOLLAR company! The world’s biggest company, Google, along with Facebook and others, have made it their practice of suppressing conservative, prolife and Christian voices – including WorldNetDaily. Our free speech is daily banned, de-monetized, de-platformed, suppressed and otherwise made to "disappear."

That's right: Behind all the sound and fury of the wild political news unfolding daily, free speech and a free press are under total assault in today's America.

Google believes Trump's 2016 electoral triumph represented a huge failure on their part. They think they just didn't try hard enough on Hillary Clinton's behalf. And we know, thanks to multiple courageous ex-Google whistleblowers, that Google fully intends to get the job done right this time. They mean to make sure Trump loses in November 2020.

So Big Tech's two most important projects this year are defeating Trump in November's election and making dissenting, truth-proclaiming voices. They're still kicking themselves for having failed during the 2016 election and don't intend to make the same mistake again. According to top Google researcher Dr. Robert Epstein, Google is now poised to swing as many as 15 million votes in November's presidential election – toward the Democratic candidate!

One of Google and Facebook's most crucial strategies for making sure this happens is to silence powerful voices of truth that EXPOSE their schemes, lies, censorship, indoctrination, promotion of leftwing news, and voter manipulation.

PLEASE HELP.

- David Kupelian -

"Economics" studies obscure what "the economy" really is

From Bob Livingston's Personal Liberty Alerts, 18 January 2020:

Iran, Iraq, the Fed and your 'money:'

The whole charade of "the economy" may look like economics instead of what it really is — control of assets with paper money or credit. This little item seems to escape everyone. Establishment rhetoric has desensitized us.

Has anyone ever observed that they do not teach true monetary theory in the United States at any college or university? Only "economics." The establishment cannot allow the people to understand monetary theory and truly the people don't have a clue.

This system of control must be forever a state secret. The public must never know that their savings and production is constantly expropriated and used to keep them on a leash. If the people were taught monetary theory, they would know what the government and the central bank are doing to them. The establishment will manipulate anything and everything.

"Money as a System of Control," is a speech, available on YouTube, by Andreas M. Antonopoulos, a technologist, bitcoin expert and serial entrepreneur. It is an excellent explanation of how the government began to use money to control the population.

Mr. Antonopoulos explains it all very well in his talk. Here are the most relevant remarks:

In 1970, Richard Nixon signed the bank secrecy act and turned money into a system of control; A system of control that attempts to use money as a political tool in order to control who is able to send and receive it, who they are able to send money to, and aims for the complete surveillance of all financial transactions worldwide.

In 1970, Richard Nixon deputized the financial services field and turned it into a branch of law enforcement beyond borders, beyond jurisdiction, beyond due process, beyond political control, beyond recourse.

... a system of control corrupts the basis of money until it can no longer function as a medium of exchange and breeds exclusion. Entire countries are being cut off from financial access. You don't act in the best interests of the U.S., you lose your SWIFT code. You are no longer part of the wire transfer network. You must submit to the universal jurisdiction of American courts, like Switzerland had to do, or you lose access to international banking and the reserve currency.

You can't store value in a currency that can be confiscated at whim, frozen by any cop or banker at any time. That's not a stable store of value. You can't use it as your currency reserve or exchange reserve to buy oil if you're a country because if you cross the superpowers they will cut off your access and you will not be able to use oil. You can't use money as a medium of exchange if you can't exchange it freely with whomever you want.

The banks now play cop for the worlds superpowers. ... You don't "have money in a bank." It's not your money. You have an account ... a construct that maybe entitles you to withdraw at the pace they want. Unless you associate with the wrong people, go to the wrong protest, vote for the wrong party. This is every dictator's dream because it ensures political dissent can be snuffed out at the bank very effectively.

In case you don't believe Mr. Antonopoulos, you should know that the Trump administration has warned Iraq that it risks losing access to a critical government bank account if Baghdad kicks out American forces.

Zerohedge points out: "The New York Fed, which can freeze accounts under U.S. sanctions law or if it has reasonable suspicion the funds could violate U.S. law, said it doesn't comment on specific account holders, but as WSJ notes, this financial threat isn't theoretical: The country's financial system was squeezed in 2015 when the U.S. suspended access for several weeks to the central bank's account at the New York Fed over concerns the cash was filtering through a loosely regulated market into Iranian banks and to the Islamic State extremist group."

So you see, money supersedes political party. It is now outside the law. The only way the dollar — or any currency that replaces it — will lose the power of control is if a currency exists outside of the corruption of the state and government.

Right and wrong

There are a few people who, while they may not come close to understanding paper money, debt and credit as instruments of restriction and control, can sense that everything is not right, and so have a basic instinct to buy gold and silver coins.

Gold and silver have always been rare and precious to humans, and they have the quality of a store of value and medium of exchange built in, which is why they will always be of use as money. Yes, the government always seeks to control everything around these non-central bank currencies, tries to confiscate them and often attempts to rig the market for them. But gold and silver themselves can't be corrupted, so they are ideal as stores of value.

You should now also be aware of why the Chinese government was so adamant for years about making its currency, the yuan, legitimate on the world stage. Not because the Chinese wish economic viability. They have that already. No, the communist government craves money's new function as a system of law enforcement, surveillance and controlling the people. China has learned very well how to spread its fake fiat money around the world, building entire systems of infrastructure in Africa that it owns. It now controls African nations in the same way Western powers have done around the world for years.

I still believe in gold. I always will. But I am also for any currency – including cryptocurrency – that enables freedom of trade and a free economy. That is obviously not the dollar, although you need to hold some cash as long as the U.S. is still a world power. The dollar is there to control you, through debt, restrictions and surveillance, as you have just read.

I am truly sorry if this makes you feel less free, but it's up to you to protect yourself and your loved ones. The government does not wish to do it for you. On the contrary... as the recent threats regarding the use of the "non-political" Federal Reserve to wield geopolitical power around the world clearly show.
Yours for the truth,

Bob Livingston
Editor, The Bob Livingston Letter^®

Leftist Media Lies Cause American Deaths

From here:

Exclusive: Mychal Massie says Soleimani should have been sent to 'Islamic hell' years ago

By Mychal Massie 
Published January 6, 2020 at 6:58pm

Sirhan Sirhan is the Palestinian Muslim who murdered Democrat senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in the Ambassador Hotel, in Los Angeles. We watched in horror as the footage was replayed. That was June 1968. At that time Muslims couldn't claim American injustice as their "lie du jour."

Let's dispense with the damnable lies that Muslims are a peaceful, loving people. Those who by accident display said characteristics are the exception, not the norm. Islam is a murderous cancer on the fabric of humanity, adherents of which have committed acts of barbarous terrorism since Ishmael.

Sirhan claimed he murdered the potential 37th president of the U.S. because Kennedy supported Israel. Mohammad Taki Mehdi (M.T. Mehdi), then secretary-general of the New York-based Action Committee on Arab-American Relations, argued that Sirhan was justified in his assassination for the same reason.

Yet the Democrats and the American fake-news media insist upon shilling for these godless manifestations of the lowest forms of humanity.

It's easy to understand why anti-Semitic parasitoids like Ilhan Omar, AOC and Rashida Tlaib are upset that Qassem Soleimani was blown to Jahannam, the Islamic hell – even though that's where his kind belong and where he should have been sent many years ago.

When we hear Omar, AOC, Tlaib and the domestic terrorist group Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), we understand they're mourning the extermination of parasitosis like Soleimani, because he's the equivalent of family to them.

It's a stunning realization that Democratic leadership, with their rank and file, now condemn President Trump for saving American lives and protecting American embassies.

The duplicitous dishonesty of the so-called media cannot be overstated, especially that of CNN. People who read and follow my work are aware that Eason Jordan is one of CNN's principle co-founders and the platinum standard of false reporting.

Jordan's biography boasts his Emmy Awards, Peabody Awards, Edward R. Murrow Awards, Headliner Awards, ACE Awards, the Robert Kennedy Journalism Award, the Vanguard Award and the Livingston Award. All but three of the awards were won multiple times; but what's not noted in his boastfulness is CNN's near uninterrupted history of lies.

Specific to my documented and unimpeachable accusation, in January 2005 I wrote:

"Eason Jordan – then executive vice president and chief news executive of CNN, chairman of CNN's editorial board and member of CNN's executive committee – by his own admission kept secret Saddam Hussein's son Uday's plan to murder two brothers-in-law, after Uday had indicated his intent to Jordan, before actually committing the assassinations. Jordan also admitted concealing Hussein's horrific atrocities, including, no doubt, the filling of mass graves and torture chambers." (See: "Throwing Stones From Inside Glass Houses," WND.com, Jan. 18, 2005.)

In December 2016, I reported that CNN's Jordan "brazenly and habitually lied to fellow journalists about the integrity of his network's reporting." The truth, as Jordan would later admit, was quite different. Jordan admitted that CNN under his watch, "rarely publish[ed] the truth, preferring to parrot the party line of [Saddam] who they personally knew was a bloody maniac with terrible weapons and plans." Jordan would later admit that CNN [intentionally] misreported the news in Iraq so as to retain a news desk there and also retain a favorable relationship with Saddam Hussein. (See: "6 Eye-Popping Cases Of Mainstream Media Fake News," WND.com, Dec. 19, 2016.)

CNN's false reporting resulted in the continued torture and murder of Iraqis and cost the lives of American troops. But CNN would have us believe that President Trump's terminating the existence of terrorists who were responsible for the killing of thousands including Americans is a bad thing.

A longtime friend, who escaped Castro's Cuba with his family, is the successful founder/owner of a global business. Not long ago as we talked, he made clear his absolute contempt for John Kennedy because of the Bay of Pigs treachery. But, those who are attacking President Trump obviously don't recall that disaster.

Are we to forget that Lyndon Johnson not only escalated the war in Vietnam, but that he lied about the secret bombing raids? He was responsible for authorizing the first overt use of American troops in that godforsaken hellhole. Maybe the Trump bashers should be reminded that the violent war protests taking place in the streets and on college campuses nationwide in the 1960s were directed at a Democratic president.

These Trump-haters conveniently forget that at the same time Jimmy Carter was bringing about a national energy crisis, he was betraying the shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi. Carter's incompetence and meddling in the Middle East gave immediate rise to the Ayatollah Khomeini who ushered in the dawn of the terrorism we continue to experience today.

In addition to being a serial philander, Bill Clinton, a man of unimpeachably low morals who used his position to abuse women, was president during:

• The 1993 the World Trade Center bombing, which killed six and left 1,000 injured.
• The 1995 attack in which five U.S. military personnel were killed in a Saudi Arabia bombing.
• The 1996 bombing of King Aziz Air Force Base in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, which killed 23 Americans and left 300 injured.
• The 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 and left 500 injured.
• The1998 terrorist attack that killed 224 and left 4,000 injured in the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa.
• The bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 and left 39 injured U.S. sailors.

After each of those terrorist attacks, Clinton promised to hunt down and punish those responsible, when in actuality he did absolutely nothing – not even to visit the bombed sites or the families of those killed and wounded.

In factuality, the blood of the Americans who were murdered Sept. 11, 2001, is on the head and hands of Clinton. He was offered bin Laden on a silver platter, but he refused Sudanese President Bashir's offer to arrest, detain and hand over Osama bin Laden to the United States. The Bashir government had intelligence of OBL's daily activities and detailed intelligence concerning his finances; but as Steven Simon, then director of counter-terrorism on Clinton's National Security Council, told the Washington Post: "I [we] really only cared about one thing, that was getting [OBL] out of Sudan, not the accepting of responsibility for taking him into custody." Former Clinton adviser Dick Morris said, "[Clinton] didn't do a single thing of the stuff that I recommended on terror." ("Hannity & Colmes," Dec. 20, 2001) Had Morris' suggestions been heeded, Mohamed Atta would have been deported before 9/11; as Morris put it, "In each of these areas he [Clinton] fell asleep at the switch." (See: "Many Americans Have Short Memory Spans," Aug. 11, 2014.)

The media in Stalingrad are trust worthier than the fake-news media in America. They, as the neutered lap dogs of the Democratic Party, rush to embrace Muslim terrorists and attack President Trump for saving American lives – as well as the lives of Syrians and Iraqis. They ignore the fact that Obama launched 2,800 missile/air strikes on the Syrians and on the Iraqi people. That was "10 times more air strikes in the covert war on terror during Obama's [period] than under … George W. Bush, the Bureau for Investigative Journalism reported in 2017." (See: "Note to Democrats: Obama Launched 2,800 Strikes on Iraq, Syria Without Congressional Approval," Conservative Media News/Politics.)

They also ignore the fact that Obama and Hillary Clinton permitted the murder of Tyrone Woods, Ambassador Stephens, Sean Smith and Glen Doherty in Benghazi. And that Obama paraded Susan Rice out to tell lie after lie about what factually had happened.

But we are supposed to be upset that President Trump has used measured engagements to eliminate terrorist Muslims who would have been eliminated long ago if Clinton, Bush and/or Obama cared more about us than they did the terrorists.

Canadian "Judges" Still Massive Hypocrites

During the recent total fuck-up of the Lansdowne Park file at the City of Ottawa, where prime public land was literally given, tax-free, for commercial redevelopment, to the banks, and where the city officials failed to follow even one of their own 40 rules concerning such transfers, one Canadian "Judge" decided that, since nobody could prove a conspiracy of intentional, criminal negligence, then no negligence at all could have occurred, despite all the evidence being to the exact contrary. 

Now in this case, we have another "judge" coming up with the exact opposite: sure, this guy was, for a split second, negligent, and his momentary inattention caused a lot of mayhem - but she emoted that, since it did cause a lot of pain and suffering, therefore his common negligence must have been deliberately, criminally intentional, and so he was charged criminally and sentenced to 10 years for a simple and all-too common mistake that most other people have also, at one time or other in their lives, also made!

The driver who killed the Humboldt Broncos received too harsh a sentence.

By Parker Donham National Post, Thursday January 2nd, 2020.

Drivers who have been plastered drunk, killed multiple innocents, expressed no remorse and fought the charges all the way have received much lighter sentences.

In 2019, Canada’s criminal justice system faced an unusual test: a defendant so distraught over the catastrophic consequences of his small misdeed, he refused to mount any defence — though defences were available — and instructed his lawyer to make no recommendation on sentencing.

The court responded not with empathy and compassion but with severity disproportionate to similar cases and the underlying offence. Impassioned victim-impact statements paved the path to this miscarriage.

On April 6, 2018, Jaskirat Sidhu made a mistake with unimaginably horrific consequences. With just five days’ training and three weeks on the job — less than one week driving solo — he was hauling peat bales across Saskatchewan in a semi-trailer towing a secondary pup-trailer. At some point he got lost and pulled over to check his GPS, only to get stuck in the soft shoulder. Unable to reach a towing company, he eventually got a farmer to pull his rig back onto the highway.

Then the tarp covering his load came loose. He stopped and retied it. Fifteen minutes later, the tarp loosened again. Distracted by the flapping fabric in his side mirror, Sidhu ran a stop sign.

A bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team T-boned the truck, killing 16 people on the bus and injuring 13.

Sidhu was uninjured, but overwhelmed by the catastrophe he had caused. From the moment of the collision, he did everything we ask remorseful criminal defendants to do. He co-operated with police at the scene and in the weeks following the crash. He pleaded guilty at his first opportunity to 16 counts of dangerous driving causing death and 13 of dangerous driving causing injury. This spared family members the ordeal of a trial. He directed his lawyer to do no plea bargaining, and make no recommendation on sentencing. He delivered a heartfelt apology to the families in court.

Accepting responsibility is the first step toward rehabilitation, the primary purpose of our criminal justice system. Nevertheless, prosecutor Thomas Healey asked for a sentence of 10 years, a recommendation one Toronto lawyer described as “shockingly high.” Daniel Brown, who specializes in dangerous driving cases, told the CBC Sidhu’s actions “barely cross the threshold to be prosecuted as dangerous driving.”

Before passing sentence, Saskatchewan Provincial Court Judge Inez Cardinal considered 90 victim-impact statements, most of which were read aloud in a four-day hearing last January.

I have never lost a child, and I can scarcely imagine the soul-destroying anguish of those who have. It is no surprise, and no criticism of those who have lost family members, that victim-impact statements are often harshly retributive. As such, they add powerful emotional weight to the prosecution side of the scale. They bring raw emotion to a process meant to be dispassionate.

In ancient times, people settled disputes privately. The offended party, if they had the means, took revenge against the offender in what often became an escalating exercise in mayhem. A central purpose of the justice system is to remove emotion and exercise judgment dispassionately. It is a public venture. The court acts on behalf of society, not the victim.

Victim-impact statements undercut these principles. They bring the devices of grief porn and reality TV into the courtroom. Prosecutors often help survivors write them. MADD has a tutorial with tips on how to make them effective — that is, likely to increase sentence severity.

Some victim advocates say statements help them heal, but court is not therapy and judges are not therapists. Surely, we can find better ways to help victims.

The U.S. jurist Thurgood Marshall complained that victim-impact statements take “the jury’s attention away from the character of the defendant and the circumstances of the crime to such illicit considerations as the eloquence with which family members express their grief and the status of the victim in the community.”

Most judges insist victim-impact statements don’t influence the sentences they pass. Prosecutors and the law-and-order right know better. Studies show victim evidence is correlated with longer sentences. How could anyone consider 90 emotive statements from suffering families voicing anguish over the unspeakable losses they have suffered and not be affected?


The statements Cardinal heard were eloquent and gut-wrenching. Almost all were deeply angry, but a few, like that of Christina Haugan, widow of head coach Darcy Haugan, offered Sidhu forgiveness. Paul Jefferson, who billeted two Broncos players, urged Cardinal not to make Sidhu “the 30th victim of this tragedy.”

Cardinal, who spent 20 years as a prosecutor before her elevation to the bench, declined to heed this advice. 

Canadian law required Cardinal to consider the horrific death toll in passing sentence. This seems perverse to me. All drivers occasionally commit inadvertent offences. Surely culpability ought to lie in the misbehaviour, not its consequences, which, in the Humboldt crash, amounted to one-in-a-billion bad luck. But the law is clear: the magnitude of the consequences must factor in, even if the underlying infraction was minor.

The law also required Cardinal to consider Sidhu’s exemplary behaviour after the disaster, and many mitigating factors that weighed in his favour. He had a spotless driving record, and no criminal history. He had consumed no drugs or alcohol prior to the crash. He had not used his cellphone during the trip. He was not speeding, or driving aggressively.

Judge Cardinal’s decision lists some of these mitigating factors, but gives them little weight. It ignores others altogether.

Instead, her decision dwells on, and sometimes exaggerates, the magnitude of Sidhu’s wrongdoing. It repeatedly cites “five warning signs” he allegedly blew through. In reality, only two of these were warnings. The others were exit signs of the kind people routinely drive by without registering.
Cardinal repeatedly describes Sidhu as “a professional, trained driver,” a status that increases culpability. This is true in a narrow, literal sense, but renders an inaccurate picture of the complete novice who was operating way over his head that day. (Safety advocates denounced Sidhu’s training as woefully inadequate. After the crash, Saskatchewan implemented mandatory training for semi drivers.)

The decision also fails to acknowledge that the intersection where the collision occurred was poorly designed and had been the site of a previous accident with multiple fatalities. (After the crash, Saskatchewan implemented design changes including better signage, pavement markings, rumble strips, tree removal, and wider shoulders.)

Cardinal sentenced Sidhu to eight years in prison, the longest sentence in Canadian history for dangerous driving causing death. Drivers who have been plastered drunk, killed multiple innocents, expressed no remorse, and fought the charges all the way, have invariably received much lighter sentences.

A devastated defendant, believing he deserved terrible punishment, said nothing in his defence, but placed himself at the mercy of the court. In response, the court skewed toward vengeance.

Canada's "anti"-Terrorism Directorate: There's No Money In Solutions!

Every part of this farce is a huge waste of time tax money and resources, and so aids and abets terrorists. 
This is criminally-negligent stupidity on steroids, and those involved are all traitors.

By the National Posts's Douglas Quan on January 2nd, 2020.

National security and legal experts say they’re hopeful Ottawa’s plan to create a new office specializing in terrorism prosecutions will improve this country’s track record of holding accountable those who threaten public safety.

NO, AS USUAL WITH LIBERAL GOVERNMENTS, IT WILL DO THE EXACT OPPOSITE AND 
ENCOURAGE TERRORISM.

“It’s been an inconsistent track record,” said Phil Gurski, a former CSIS analyst and president of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting Ltd. “My initial reaction is ‘yay,’ but the form this thing takes dictates whether it means anything. The devil is in the details.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently directed the ministers of justice and public safety in their mandate letters to “coordinate efforts to prosecute terror suspects to the fullest extent of the law” and create a new office of Director of Terrorism Prosecutions.

AND OF COURSE ALSO THEN, IF THEY'RE SWARTHY FOREIGNERS, TO RELEASE THEM WITH $10 MILLION PAYOUTS, TO AVOID CHARGES OF RACISM! WHEE!

Since Canada’s adoption of the Anti-terrorism Act in 2001, 56 people have been charged with terrorism-related offences in this country.

WOW, REALLY? THAT'S LIKE ... 2.5 A YEAR. 

(I THINK THEY MAY HAVE MISSED A FEW)!

The outcomes have been mixed.

In February, federal prosecutors announced that Rehab Dughmosh had been sentenced to seven years in prison after being found guilty of leaving Canada to participate in the activities of a terrorist group and other offences. Prosecutors said she had tried to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State in April 2016 and used a knife and a golf club to assault people at a Canadian Tire store in Scarborough, Ont., in June 2017.

When Ayanle Hassan Ali went on a knife rampage at a Canadian Forces recruiting centre in Toronto in 2016, injuring two people, federal prosecutors took the position he did so for the benefit of, at the direction of or in association with a terrorist group of which he was the only member. 

But the trial judge found him not guilty of the terror charge and found him not criminally responsible for other offences, including attempted murder, on account of mental disorder.

The Crown tried to make the case on appeal that a “lone wolf” can commit an act of terror to advance his own self-constituted terrorist group. But the appeal was recently dismissed by the Ontario Court of Appeal.

BUT WHY SHOULD "TERRORISM" (i.e: MASS EXTORTION) REQUIRE ONE'S GROUP MEMBERSHIP, AS OPPOSED TO IT SIMPLY TARGETING GROUPS OF PEOPLE, AS OPPOSED TO, SAY, COMMON EXTORTION "ONLY" TARGETING INDIVIDUALS?! (BECAUSE LIBERALS ARE BACKWARDS.)

Citing errors in jury selection, Ontario’s top court this past summer ordered a new trial for Raed Jaser and Chiheb Esseghaier who were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder for the benefit of a terrorist group and for participating in terrorist activity in relation to a plot to derail a Via Rail passenger train.

GOOD REASON TO ENDANGER THE PUBLIC, RETARD.

Michael Nesbitt, a law professor and fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute at the University of Calgary, said terrorism cases are notoriously difficult to prosecute, which likely accounts for why the rate of acquittals is slightly higher in terrorism cases than for all criminal cases — 12 per cent versus  four per cent, according to a paper he published in 2018.

THAT'S BECAUSE YOU WANT TO ASSIGN A LIST OF FALSE MOTIVATIONAL REQUIREMENTS TO THE COMMON CRIME OF EXTORTION.

Prosecutors, for instance, have to show the perpetrators not only intentionally caused death or serious harm (or risk of harm) to the public but were motivated by an ideological, political or religious purpose, he said.

RIGHT. BECAUSE ALL CRIMES MUST BE ORGANIZED CRIMES, OR THEY WEREN'T CRIMES AT ALL; AND ALL TERRORISTS MUST BE MEMBERS OF TERROR-GANGS, OR THEIR TERRORISM DIDN'T TERRORIZE ANYONE! WHEE!

PATHETIC LIBLOGIC STRIKES HARD AT OUR CITIZENS' POCKETBOOKS AGAIN!

They also face potential complications related to disclosure of information. The gathering of intelligence and evidence typically involves multiple agencies, such as CSIS and the RCMP, as well as foreign partners. Questions inevitably come up: how did those agencies communicate with one another? How was information obtained? What are they obligated to release?

SO EACH INTELLIGENCE GROUP HAS TO LET THE TERRORISTS IT CAPTURES GO FREE, LEST IT RISK EXPOSING THE ORIGINS OF ITS INTEL IN OTHER GROUPS.

(THIS HAS ACTUALLY HAPPENED, AND RECENTLY, TOO).

Nesbitt agrees it would be helpful to have a director of terrorism prosecutions to standardize charging practices, help give more uniform advice to the RCMP and CSIS about their disclosure obligations, build up expertise within the prosecutorial ranks and weed out any biases that may exist.

"PROSECUTORIAL EXPERTISE!"? 
TERRORISM = EXTORTION! DUH!

Nesbitt noted, for instance, that prosecutors have directed most of their terrorism charges at extremists who were inspired by al-Qaida and Islamic State but not far-right extremists, such as Alexandre Bissonnette, the man behind the deadly Quebec City mosque shooting in 2017, or those involved in the financing of Hezbollah.

“How, when and why the government is choosing to classify some attacks as terrorism and not others has become hard, if not impossible, to figure from outside government,” he wrote in a soon-to-be-published blog post.

WHAT'S SO HARD TO FIGURE OUT ABOUT IT?! ALL FOUR SCENARIOS INVOLVED ISLAM AND MUSLIMS - AND THEY ALSO ALL INVOLVED THE CONSEQUENCES OF IGNORING ISLAM AND  MUSLIMS, TOO! (AND WTF DOES THAT LAST BIT EVEN MEAN, MORON?)!

The idea for a director of terrorism prosecutions was first proposed in 2010 in the final report of the inquiry into the investigation of the bombing of Air India Flight 182 in 1985. It recommended that “one unit should be responsible for dealing with all aspects of terrorism prosecution,” including managing the relationship between government agencies, providing legal support to law enforcement agencies and ensuring the secrecy of intelligence operations is maintained while making sure rules over disclosure of information are followed.

The report recommended the new director of terrorism prosecutions serve under the Attorney General of Canada and help “create a pool of experienced counsel for terrorism prosecutions.”

University of Toronto law professor Kent Roach, who served as research director for the inquiry, told the Post having the new unit serve under the attorney general makes sense given the need to consult with allies and domestic agencies about secrecy claims.

THIS ENTIRE EXPENSIVELY WASTEFUL FARCE ONLY EXISTS BECAUSE YOU LYING TREASONOUS MORONS WANT TO KEEP THE REAL MOTIVATIONS OF ALL TERRORISTS (ISLAM) A SECRET!

“I agree it is best to integrate both those who prosecute and those who make secrecy claims because in difficult cases there may be trade-offs between keeping Canadian (and our international partners) secrets and having a prosecution go forward with enough disclosure to the accused to make the trial fair,” he wrote in an email. “The secrecy issues have been a challenging aspect of both terrorism and espionage cases so it would make sense for the office to do both.”

Nesbitt, however, suggests the new director of terrorism prosecutions should be housed within the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, so as to avoid having two streams of prosecutors — one involved in terrorism and one involved in other federal crimes — reporting separately to the attorney general.

SO THEY WANT TO CONTROL US BY CENTRALIZING ALL INTEL AND TERROR PROSECUTIONS IN ONE OFFICE, THE BETTER TO KEEP ITS ISLAMIC ORIGINS ALL A SECRET FROM THE PUBLIC THEY ALLEGEDLY SERVE, AND TO CENSOR THOSE OF US WHO DARE TO EXPOSE IT.

He also advises against centralizing the new unit in Ottawa or Toronto to allow for involvement of prosecutors elsewhere in the country who know how to respond to regional differences in terms of threats and approaches to litigation.

SURE, LET'S MAKE IT PHYSICALLY INACCESSIBLE, TOO - "BECAUSE FAIRNESS!"

It is unclear where the creation of a new director of terrorism prosecutions sits in Justice Minister David Lametti’s list of priorities. His mandate letter from the prime minister asks him to lead an “immediate” process, for instance, to develop a new framework for sick people to receive medical assistance in dying.

In a statement, Lametti’s office said: “Under our government, Canada has already convicted four individuals for terrorism-related offences after their return to Canada, and another returnee has been charged. … The creation of the Director of Terrorism Prosecutions is in line with recommendations from the Air India Commission, and would help build specialized expertise on terrorism cases — which can be quite complex.”

NO, THEY'RE REALLY NOT! THEY INVOLVE A BUNCH OF ILLITERATE FOREIGN SUB-HUMANS WITH CELL-PHONE ACTIVATED EXPLOSIVES AT MOST, YOU RETARDS.

The office declined, however, to offer a timeline, saying only it would work “expeditiously” with the public safety minister to create the new office.

Lobotomizing Liberals 101: Trepanning Makes a Comeback!

By Sharon Kirkey. From the Tuesday, December 31st, 2019 edition of the National Post, and from online here:

DEEP BRAIN STIMULATION AIMS TO TACKLE ALCOHOLISM

The worst part was the noise and vibration of the drill burrowing into his skull.

But Frank Plummer’s main worry, after undergoing deep brain stimulation for alcohol use disorder, “was whether or not my hair would grow back.”

It did. So did his joy for life.

The former scientific director of Canada’s national microbiology laboratory is one year out from becoming the first person in a North American trial to undergo deep brain stimulation, or DBS, for chronic and compulsive heavy drinking.

Plummer, 67, went public with his experimental surgery in December. “A family history of liver disease plus alcohol was my undoing,” the renowned scientist wrote in a first-person essay released by Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, the world’s only centre currently testing DBS for alcohol use disorder, or AUD, a brain disease colloquially known as "alcoholism," that afflicts more than one million Canadians in any given year.

i.e: "I DIDN'T MIS-USE THE ALCOHOL! THE ALCOHOL USE DISORDER MADE ME DO IT! WHEE!"

Plummer was addicted to booze, scotch in particular, and was “waiting to die” — all sorts of rehab, counselling and group meetings having ultimately failed to keep him from drinking, and a transplanted liver that was giving out — when doctors drilled two nickel-sized holes in his head in December 2018 and planted electrodes deep inside his brain.

He no longer craves alcohol. He still drinks a little, though not every day. “I maybe have two or three drinks if I do drink,” he said in an interview. “And I can stop.”

That it sometimes requires having electrodes imbedded in your brain to dull the desire for alcohol speaks to the pull booze can have on the mind.

NO, IT "SPEAKS TO" THE LENGTHS SOME PEOPLE WILL GO TO, TO CULTIVATE EXCUSES!

Word of Plummer’s near resurrection comes as a new study shows alcohol accounts for more lost productivity in Canada than any other substance, and as “Dry January” looms, which lulls people into believing 30 days of sobriety is sufficient to reboot their livers. If only it were true.

Alcohol is a not-insignificant part of many Canadian lives, just as it was for Plummer. Nearly 15,000 deaths per year can be attributed to alcohol, according to a recent policy paper from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and the sobering stats go on and on. More Canadians (77,000 annually) are hospitalized for booze-related illnesses or injury than for heart attacks. Forty per cent of Ontarians consume more alcohol than they believe to be safe. Collectively, we drink 10 litres of pure alcohol per capita annually, 3.6 litres more than the world average.

Booze has been associated with an increased risk of stroke and heart disease. It’s been causally linked to the development of cancers of the digestive tract, nasopharynx, liver, rectum and breast. It’s been classified a Class 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, meaning that it’s known to promote cancer in humans. In the U.S. the American Public Health Association and other groups are pushing to have cancer-warning labels pasted on beer, wine and liquor, arguing few people are aware of the connection.

It’s debatable whether it would make a difference. As the CAMH paper notes, “people seem prepared to accept more risk for alcohol consumption than they do for other risky activity.”

And our drinking is costing the economy billions. A study appearing in this month’s issue of the Canadian Journal of Public Health estimates that the total cost of lost workplace productivity due to premature death, long-term disability, “presenteeism” (showing up at work sick, or hung over) and absenteeism due to substance use was $15.7 billion in 2014, up eight per cent from 2007. Alcohol clocked in as the substance responsible for the greatest economic costs (38 per cent of per capita costs), followed by tobacco (37 per cent), and opioids (12 per cent).

What explains our coziness with booze? “There’s the accessibility of it, the social acceptance nature of it,” said Dr. Nir Lipsman, director of Sunnybrook’s Harquail Centre for Neuromodulation.

In many ways we drink a lot less than we once did. In the ‘70s, “it was normal to go for a drink every lunchtime, and then go out for a drink after work,” said Dr. Kevin Moore, a consultant hepatologist based at University College London and Royal Free Hospital.

We used to drink more, but the drinks were weaker. A pint in the pub contained three per cent alcohol. The average alcohol content of today’s craft beer is closer to six per cent. Wine was bottled at 10 or 11 per cent alcohol. “Today, when you go to an off-license it’s hard to find a wine that’s only got 12 per cent,” Moore said.

People drink for different reasons. For those with a history of abuse or trauma, it’s one way of forgetting, Moore said. “But quite a lot of people use it for anxiety, actually — it’s one way of getting rid of their anxiety.” And the idea of stopping — even for 30 consecutive days — can be seriously alarming. “I had one subject who said, ‘I’ve drunk every day for 10 years. I’m terrified of stopping,’” Moore said.

The U.K. has revised downwards its weekly drinking guideline limits, and public health campaigns encouraging “non-dependent drinkers” to commit to short-term abstinence are increasingly common, Moore and colleagues wrote in a study published last year in BMJ Open.

But does a month-long stint of sobriety make a true difference in health?

To find out, Moore and colleagues recruited 94 moderate-heavy drinkers representing the 25 per cent of the population that drinks above recommended guidelines. After a month of abstinence, volunteers saw significant improvements in insulin resistance, blood pressure and body weight. They also saw a decrease in circulating concentrations of two cancer-related growth factors, both of which are thought necessary for tumours to grow.

The researchers hastened to add that the idea that a brief “detox” is all that’s necessary to “refresh” the liver or reap other health benefits is “clearly untrue, since the durability of the observed biological effects remains to be established.” And some of the volunteers were “desperate to go back to drink,” Moore said. They felt socially isolated. “Some of them felt like they were pariahs at dinner parties because they were the only ones who weren’t drinking or were sober.”

However, people didn’t drink as much when they went back to drinking. Among other reasons, they liked how their sleep, focus and concentration improved. “For many people, stopping can be quite liberating,” Moore said.

Still, there are economic and social benefits of modest drinking. One study found that social drinkers have more friends and deeper bonds. In moderate amounts, booze enhances our psychosocial wellbeing. “Alcohol is known to trigger the endorphin system, and the social consumption of alcohol may thus have the same effect as the many other social activities, such as laughter, singing and dancing, that we use as a means of servicing and reinforcing social bonds,” the researchers wrote.

Plummer drank to unwind from the pressures of running a research operation in Nairobi during the AIDS epidemic, and then a 400-person national microbiology lab in Winnipeg. “I think in some ways it also helped me, relaxing me enough to the point where I could think, and contemplate,” he told the Post. But after leaving the NML, things got “really bad.” He was drinking in the morning, and could polish off 20 ounces of scotch a night. “It got to be the main focus of my life.” And so the scientist went in search of a more “robust” medical solution.

GEE, HE'S JUST THE KIND OF GUY EVERYONE WANTS IN CHARGE OF THEIR MEDICAL PROGRAMS!

The idea that doctors could intervene locally, in a key structure in the brain, was borrowed from the movement disorder literature, from people with treatment-resistant Parkinson’s disease or tremors. Conditions that have been linked to disordered circuitry in the brain.

Deep brain stimulation is a kind of pacemaker for the brain. An electrode in the brain is attached to a battery implanted in the chest wall underneath the collarbone. In this case, researchers are targeting dysfunctional wiring in the nucleus accumbens, a cluster of nerve cells involved in pleasure and motivation.

The skull itself doesn’t have that much in the way of nerve supply. Still, Plummer, his head fixed in a halo apparatus, was given lots of local freezing before surgeons made an incision in his scalp. The noise and vibration “was like putting your home hand drill up to your head,” he said. “It wasn’t painful, just not pleasant.”

DBS for alcohol use disorder is highly experimental. Sunnybrook is testing it on just six patients. People typically go back home after a day or two in hospital, but it takes several weeks and months to find the optimal electrical dose. It’s not a one-size fits all program setting. The electrical stimulation is always on, firing day and night.

“We’re not turning on a light switch and something will change dramatically,” Lipsman said. It’s more like a dimmer. The surgery also carries small but real risks, including bleeding, swelling, infection and implant failure. And it’s not for social drinkers, or people still responsive to conventional medical and rehab treatments. “These are people who are truly treatment resistant,” Lipsman said.

Today, Plummer’s life has changed. Alcohol doesn’t interest him anymore. What does interest him is writing his book, taking his dog out for walks, cooking and “just enjoying life for the first time in a very long time.”

“My life is full of lots of other things than alcohol,” he said.