The globalist ruling class as represented by the Davos crowd is at it again. With the recent kerfuffle in Washington and Europe over the future of Ukraine, we can assure ourselves that the World Economic Forum will be there to pick up the pieces.
Here is an announcement from the WEF on the launching of a "GovTech" centre in Kiev, only the second in the world after the centre in Berlin:
This centre will be "part of the World Economic Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) Network and represents only the second centre globally with a focus on GovTech following the signing of the Global Government Technology Centre Berlin (GGTC Berlin) in January 2024. Together with GGTC Berlin, GGTC Kyiv will connect national GovTech ecosystems with a global network of experts to promote more efficient, effective and accessible public services."
If you read down through the press release, you'll find this with my bolds:
"With technological advancements rapidly reshaping industries and societies globally, it is becoming increasingly imperative for nations to harness these innovations. In recent years, Ukraine has emerged as a global leader in GovTech and its experience can inform others in driving digital transformation within the public sector. Its Diia app with over 20 million users and the Diia platform integrate over 100 government services and tens of digital documents, ranging from digital ID cards and driver licences to business registration and social benefits, exemplifying the ways in which digital tools can simplify interactions between citizens and the state."
Or make it easier for the state to track and trace its citizens.
"According to World Economic Forum Managing Director Mirek Dušek, the centre in Ukraine will support WEF’s global efforts to unlock the potential of digital technologies to improve public services and create new opportunities. And it will serve as a catalyst for public-private collaboration, fostering digital technology and innovation at a critical time for Ukraine and Europe.
Key features of the centre will include:
GovTech Observatory: A platform tracking global and national GovTech trends, enabling knowledge sharing and data-driven policy through research, tools, and global partnerships.
Innovation Gateway: A hub for piloting and scaling technologies in Ukraine, showcasing innovation in AI, EdTech, Defence Tech, and more, with global investment support.
FutureGov Education: A training platform for public sector leaders to adopt cutting-edge technologies, fostering experimentation and global collaboration.
The powers that ought not to be will be selling us the concept of "unlocking the potential of digital technologies" to "improve public services and create new opportunities" rather nebulous ideas, don't you think?
In other words, this WEF initiative will be launching point for a digital identity, an essential part of the central bank digital currency ecosystem.Ukraine will be desperate enough for the jobs that it will go along with this plan by the rulers.It will be simpler for the technocracy to use Ukraine to implement their plans for a digital prison by taking advantage of a nation whose infrastructure and economy has been completely destroyed, giving them the ability to build a neofeudal state from the ground up.
The recent and very public argument between Donald Trump, JD Vance and Vladimir Zelenskyy has drawn the world's attention and has led to a great deal of criticism by the left-leaning, anti-Trump media about how Donald Trump was disrespectful to a leader whose nation is fighting a critical war for the "freedom of the world". You'd almost think that the media has forgotten this bit of history from June 2022:
Here's a quote from the story as covered by NBC News in October 2022:
"It’s become routine since Russia invaded Ukraine: President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speak by phone whenever the U.S. announces a new package of military assistance for Kyiv.
But a phone call between the two leaders in June played out differently from previous ones, according to four people familiar with the call. Biden had barely finished telling Zelenskyy he’d just greenlighted another $1 billion in U.S. military assistance for Ukraine when Zelenskyy started listing all the additional help he needed and wasn’t getting. Biden lost his temper, the people familiar with the call said. The American people were being quite generous, and his administration and the U.S. military were working hard to help Ukraine, he said, raising his voice, and Zelenskyy could show a little more gratitude."
Does this sound familiar in any way?
Here's more from NBC:
"Before the June 15 (2022) phone call, the president’s frustrations with Zelenskyy had been building for weeks, three people familiar with the call said. Biden and some of his top aides felt that the administration was doing as much as it could as quickly as it could but that Zelenskyy continued to focus publicly on only what wasn’t being done."
And, to close:
"After the pushback Zelenskyy got in their June phone call, his team decided to try to defuse tensions, concluding it wasn’t productive to have friction with the U.S. president, according to two sources familiar with the Ukraine government’s view, congressional aides and two European officials.
Zelenskyy responded publicly that day by thanking Biden for the promised assistance.
“I had an important conversation with U.S. President Biden today,” he saidin videotaped remarks. “I am grateful for this support. It is especially important for our defense in Donbas.”
Here's the NBC News video which covers the story:
If you take this story into consideration, it would certainly appear that Zelenskyy has bought into his own press, believing that he is a rockstar world leader.One would have to wonder, however, if he isn't the one with the behavioural problem? It would seem, at the very least, that Zelenskyy believes that he is entitled to an unending supply of free arms from the United States, a nation that has already supplied him with over $120 billion in military, humanitarian and financial aid.
Isn't it fascinating how the 21st century mainstream media has become just like the media portrayed in George Orwell's 1984 where history is memory holed when it becomes inconvenient to the deep state's narrative, in this case, it's anti-Trump mantra?
An op-ed piece by Ivan Dunaevsky in the Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a newspaper published by the Government of Russia, provides us with some interesting viewpoints from the Russian government on the soon-to-be extinct Biden Administration's decision to allow its ATACMS longer range missiles to be used by the Ukrainians to send a "message" further into the Russian fatherland , in particular, how this might impact the incoming Trump Administration.
Here is a key quote from this article with my bolds:
"Hobble the successor:
In fact, it is expected that Biden will look for ways to escalate the Ukrainian crisis at the end of his term. The purpose of the rumor about strikes on Russia and the most possible solution to this issue is succinctly reflected in the headline of the CNN article: "Biden has raised the stakes in the conflict that Trump will inherit. It is a provocative move with special symbolism."
Although US President-elect Donald Trump will not take office until January 20, 2025, his election victory has already had a noticeable impact on the tone of the media noise on the Ukrainian crisis. And this is not only a flurry of comments from journalists and experts about what his return to the White House means for Ukraine, but also numerous statements from politicians from different countries, most of which are about the prospects for a peaceful settlement. Trump himself promised to resolve the crisis even before his inauguration, and a number of his appointees to key positions have previously criticized aid to Ukraine. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently even allowed himself to break the taboo that has been tacitly in effect in the West and call the Russian president .
Biden, apparently, cannot come to terms with this, thereby increasingly openly demonstrating that the Ukrainian crisis is very much his personal creation. He set himself the goal of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia and invested in it, as the Pentagon recently calculated, not only about 180 billion dollars, but also all his political weight, forcing NATO allies to follow him....
Nevertheless, it cannot be ruled out that in the remaining weeks he will try to complicate the possible implementation of Trump's plans. After Trump's victory, the White House stated that by the end of his term they would hastily spend the last 6 billion dollars that Congress had previously allocated for these purposes on weapons for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Other solutions to escalate the situation are also possible, including those discussed in the American media."
If, indeed, the Biden Administration does allow or encourage the use of its medium-range missiles to attack the Russian heartland and Russian President Vladimir Putin does act on his "NATO crossing the red line" mantra, the world could well be headed for a major conflict between two superpowers all because the outgoing Administration wants to hobble the incoming one. We can only hope that Putin will hold off on any response should Ukraine decide to use America's supersonic ballistic missiles with the hope that saner heads will prevail in the next Administration and put a quick end to this losing proposition.
The 90 second video shows a battle apparently between Russian and Ukrainian forces with an appeal to Russia's wide-ranging religious groups:
1.) Orthodox Christianity - an icon of St. George, an important saint in the Orthodox religion, who represents the trump of God and goodness over evil and the Devil. In this part of the video, the soldier is shown making the sign of the cross as he is under artillery fire.
2.) Islam - a tank crew member is shown reciting a Muslim prayer.
3.) Buddhism - a sniper reads a Buddhist matra while holding his prayer beads.
4.) Orthodox Christianity - a Russian infantryman is shown wearing and kissing a silver cross around his neck with a Russian armoured column coming wot his rescue with a caption reading "We are [ ]. God is with us." The blank space is filled with the names of two dozen major ethnic groups that populate Russia, including Ukrainians at the end of the video, stating that "We are Russians" (Мы русские) at the very end.
5.) Islam - a tank driver is shown praying to Allah.
It's interesting to see how Russia is invoking religious beliefs to attract Russian citizens to the special operations in Ukraine.
1.) 650,000 Russian military personnel have gained combat experience during the special military operation.
2.) Over 1,500 people apply for military service every day.
3.) 490,000 contract military personnel and volunteers joined the Russian Armed Forces in 2023.
4.) over 4,000 Russian students have volunteariy taken an academic leave and are performing combat missions.
5.) 272 people have become Heroes of Russia/Gold Star, the highest honorary title of the Russian Federation bestowed on individuals that are connected to a heroic feat of valour, during the special military operation.
6.) over 320,000 people have received state honours during the special military operation.
7.) over 13,500 mercenary fighters have arrived in Ukraine with 8,500 from Europe, 1,700 from Asia and 2,700 from North and South America.
So, why would Russia feel that it is necessary to recruit more fighters into its military? Here are just two of many reasons:
Russia, the beneficiary of Nazi Germany's incursion into its heartland that led to the deaths of tens of millions of Soviet citizens and soldiers feels threatened for some reason.
Here's a final quote from the ministry, encouraging Russians of all ethnicities and religious affiliations to come together to face a common enemy:
"We are Russians. God is with us. Prayer is not just words, it is a powerful force. Be with the strong, be with us, join your comrades."
Isn't it interesting how God is seemingly on both sides of a war no matter how just the cause may appear to be?
At the 2024 edition of the cluster*ck in Davos, former Czech President Václav Klaus had the opportunity to take centre stage and offer his views on the world, in particularly the Russian-Ukraine conflict. In this posting, I'll look at some of his more interesting comments which fly directly in the face of what the Western media has been touting for the past two years.
He opens by noting that he was invited to say a few words on the "very risky topic of the Russia-Ukraine war from the perspective of a former Central European politician." and admits that he is not an expert on Ukraine but does have expertise on the transition from communism to parliamentary democracy and a market economy since he spent most of his life in a Communist nation under Soviet domination, two aspects of Ukraine which have not been successfully implemented and remain incomplete.
Here are some quotes with my bolds throughout:
"As compared to other ex-communist countries, Ukraine before the war couldn’t have been described as a Western-type democracy, a country with full-fledged market economy or a consolidated country as regards its territory and the composition of its inhabitants. To pretend that this was not the case and to discuss the current war on Ukrainian territory as if it were taking place in a vacuum is neither helpful nor productive."
If we want to see how unconsolidated Ukraine was prior to the war, here is a map showing the languages spoken in Ukraine:
Note that the eastern side of Ukraine including Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk which border Russia is primarily inhabited by Russian speakers.
While most media outlets pay very little attention to Russia's military penetration into Ukraine, in fact, it is clear that Russia has no intention of taking over regions of the nation that are not in its "sphere", remaining more-or-less stable in the area where Russian culture is pervasive.
With that background, let's go back to Václav Klaus' speech to the global ruling class at the World Economic Forum:
"With that in mind, let me make a few comments about this war:
1. The entire Ukraine war could and should have been avoided. We have to admit that we – the rest of the world – have failed. It becomes increasingly obvious that after this tragic historic event there will only be losers. There will be no winners. The war has changed the world and the fate of all of us.
2. The geopolitical debate about it, especially in Europe and in the US (and in my own country, in the Czech Republic, as well) is more superficial than it deserves to be. It has been avoiding important and relevant pieces of knowledge about Ukraine, the whole region and the overall geopolitical context. Especially the fact of the end of the monopolar world of the last decades.
3. We shouldn’t forget its historic context. This war started on 4 April 2008. On that day, at the NATO summit in Bucharest, the decision was made to admit Ukraine and Georgia to NATO. I was present at that event, I was sitting there and I knew already there that what happened was a tragic mistake. I tried to argue against it there. This decision was pushed through by the US and the UK (George Bush and Gordon Brown) against the stances of the majority of the participating member countries and in opposition to the positions of Germany and France. I must admit that I felt very depressed there. Many of the attending Presidents and Prime Ministers were irresponsibly silent during the very long evening. It is also well-known that the US ambassador in Moscow, W. Burns, warned the US government at the time that this meant crossing all the so-called “red lines” for Russia.[*]
4. All the evidence suggests that on February 24, 2022, the Russians did not intend to occupy Ukraine, but to change the regime in Kiev and to stop the prospect of Ukraine’s NATO membership. That is why they entered Ukraine with only very small military forces. It was and is evident that they were not going to risk an attempt to take over the whole Ukraine. The Russians knew perfectly well the results of the important presidential elections in 2010, a pro-Western candidate winning in the west, north and centre of Ukraine and a pro-Russian candidate in the east and south. It was a big mistake not to pay attention to this fundamental split of the country.
5. There has been already since 2014 (not February 2022) a civil war in eastern Ukraine with all its terrible casualties and human tragedies.
6. After almost two years of war, it appears that all sides in the conflict have miscalculated. Not only Russia and Ukraine, but also the US and the whole of Europe.
7. Looking at the military situation, the 1,200-kilometre front, leaving aside small shifts, is more or less frozen now. The end of the war is not in sight. It is “in the stars” as we say.
Klaus' analysis suggests that the basic cause of the conflict stems from a series of errors made by the United States, the United Kingdom and NATO which eventually led to this two year-old war which has cost the lives of at least 10,000 civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers from both sides.
Here are his recommendations:
"My modest advice is to start negotiating. Not only between Russia and Ukraine."
Wise words that the West would be prudent to follow but I'm guessing that particular advice is not what the global elite wanted to hear since at least some of them (Big Defense in specific) benefit from never-ending war.
Yes, just ten short months ago, the staff at Time magazine voted Volodymr Zelensky, Ukraine's President and the leader of Washington's existential battle against all things Russian/evil, as Person of the Year with these words:
"In April, less than two months into the invasion, Zelensky told me he had aged and changed “from all this wisdom that I never wanted.” Now, half a year later, the transformation was starker. Aides who once saw him as a lightweight now praise his toughness. Slights that might once have upset him now elicit no more than a shrug. Some of his allies miss the old Zelensky, the practical joker with the boyish smile. But they realize he needs to be different now, much harder and deaf to distractions, or else his country might not survive."
Zelensky has dialed into the World Economic Forum in Davos and the NATO summit in Madrid. He has granted interviews to talk-show hosts and journalists and held live chats with students at Stanford, Harvard, and Yale. He has leveraged the fame of entertainment superstars to amplify his calls for international support. Jessica Chastain and Ben Stiller visited his fortified compound. Liev Schreiber agreed to become an ambassador for Ukraine’s official fundraising platform. Sean Penn brought an Oscar statuette to Kyiv and left it with Zelensky. Once, the President allowed a team of technicians to create a 3D hologram of his likeness, which was later projected at conferences around Europe. “Our principle is simple,” says Andriy Yermak, the President’s chief of staff. “If we fall out of focus, we are in danger.” The attention of the world serves as a shield.
Zelensky’s success as a wartime leader has relied on the fact that courage is contagious. It spread through Ukraine’s political leadership in the first days of the invasion, as everyone realized the President had stuck around. If that seems like a natural thing for a leader to do in a crisis, consider historical precedent. Only six months earlier, the President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani—a far more experienced leader than Zelensky—fled his capital as Taliban forces approached. In 2014, one of Zelensky’s predecessors, Viktor Yanukovych, ran away from Kyiv as protesters closed in on his residence; he still lives in Russia today. Early in the Second World War, the leaders of Albania, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Yugoslavia, among others, fled the advance of the German Wehrmacht and lived out the war in exile."
A year in a war can be an eternity. Here's what Time has to say about Zelensky now:
And, some quotes:
"Volodymyr Zelensky was running late.
That afternoon, Zelensky’s meetings at the White House and the Pentagon delayed him by more than an hour, and when he finally arrived to begin his speech at 6:41 p.m., he looked distant and agitated. He relied on his wife, First Lady Olena Zelenska, to carry his message of resilience on the stage beside him, while his own delivery felt stilted, as though he wanted to get it over with. At one point, while handing out medals after the speech, he urged the organizer to hurry things along.
The reason, he later said, was the exhaustion he felt that night, not only from the demands of leadership during the war but also the persistent need to convince his allies that, with their help, Ukraine can win. “Nobody believes in our victory like I do. Nobody,” Zelensky told TIME in an interview after his trip. Instilling that belief in his allies, he said, “takes all your power, your energy. You understand? It takes so much of everything.”
Twenty months into the war, about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory remains under Russian occupation. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed, and Zelensky can feel during his travels that global interest in the war has slackened. So has the level of international support. “The scariest thing is that part of the world got used to the war in Ukraine,” he says. “Exhaustion with the war rolls along like a wave. You see it in the United States, in Europe. And we see that as soon as they start to get a little tired, it becomes like a show to them: ‘I can’t watch this rerun for the 10th time.’”
Despite the recent setbacks on the battlefield, he does not intend to give up fighting or to sue for any kind of peace. On the contrary, his belief in Ukraine’s ultimate victory over Russia has hardened into a form that worries some of his advisers. It is immovable, verging on the messianic. “He deludes himself,” one of his closest aides tells me in frustration. “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”
Zelensky’s stubbornness, some of his aides say, has hurt their team’s efforts to come up with a new strategy, a new message."
The article in Time's November 20th, 2023 paints an entirely different picture of Zelensky from that painted less than a year earlier. Zelensky who, according to the author, would seem to be living in a delusion where Ukraine can still defeat Russia and win the war. He is no longer the man who got multiple standing ovations during his previous visit to Congress where he was branded a hero, rather, he comes across as a man who has lost control of his military, some of whom are now refusing orders to advance against their adversary, who is desperate for weapons that American taxpayers are increasingly reluctant to spend their hard-earned dollars on and who is heading a nation that is one of the most corrupt on earth despite his recent attempts to clean up his government.
As I have noted in previous postings, with the crisis in the Middle East claiming the front pages of the mainstream media, particularly in the United States and Europe, Zelensky is increasingly looking like yesterday's man, going from hero to zero in less than 12 months in the eyes of elected decision makers who are always about chasing the latest thing that might garner them a few extra votes. Given what happens to leaders who end up on the wrong side of America's largesse, I most certainly would not want to be in his shoes.
While the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is now relegated to page 16 thanks to the war between Israel and Palestine, there are still some interesting facts about Ukraine and the Ukrainian military operations that the government would just as soon that we forgot.
Going back to 2019, we find this letter to then Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo from a group from Congress headed by one term member of the House of Representatives Max Rose (D - NY 11):
In the Orwellian world that we now live in, it's not terribly surprising to find that a number of the signatories who are still sitting in Congress have scrubbed the letter from their websites.
The letter opens by noting that both the attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand and Halle, Germany were linked to a global, anti-semitic, white supremacist network. The signatories to the letter are questioning why the Trump Administration has failed to include certain white supremacist extremist groups on the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list. The authors note that "terrorism is terrorism" and that there is a nexus between white supremacists in the United States and in foreign organizations. You might ask which foreign organizations are the signatories referring to. Here are some quotes from the letter:
"For example, the Azov Battalion is a well-known ultranationalist organization in Ukraine that openly welcomes neo-Nazis into its ranks. The group is so well-known, in fact, that the 115th Congress of the United States stated in its 2018 omnibus spending bill that "none of the funds made available by this act may be used to provide arms, training or other assistance to the Azov Battalion". The United Nations has chronicled human rights abuses and incidents of torture in this group's relatively short history. Despite these facts, Azov has been recruiting, radicalizing and training American citizens for years, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation."
The letter goes on to state that the massacre in Christchurch was a turning point since the shooter, Brenton Tarrant, claimed that he had trained with the Azov Battalion on Ukraine and wore a neo-Nazi symbol that was associated with the group including the Black Sun or Sonnenrad as shown here:
Here is the emblem of the Azov Battalion showing the Black Sun (in white):
Here is a photo of a female Ukrainian soldier who is wearing a brown-coloured Black Sun on her chest:
Interestingly, this photo was tweeted on NATO's official Twitter account as part of an International Women's Day collage:
...and then promptly removed once it was pointed out that the imagine in question was in poor taste (to put it mildly).
Here is a photo of the Black Sun mosaic on the floor of Wewelsburg Castle, Heinrich Himmler's home in Westphalia, Germany which became his personal centre for mystical powers for historical context:
Despite the efforts of the Congressmen and women who signed the letter back in October 2019 requesting that Ukraine's Azov Battalion be added to Washington's list of terrorist organizations, it would appear that the group has been given a hard pass, perhaps because, since February 2022, "the enemy of my enemy (Russia) is most certainly my friend" when it comes to all things Ukraine no matter how many foreign terrorists they train.
This news article appeared on the Times of Israel website on October 16th, 2023:
This is how the story was reported on Ukraine's Ukrainska Pravda:
Zelensky must be concerned that "his war" is no longer grabbing the attention of the world thanks to the Hamas - Israel war. Perhaps Volodymyr thought that visiting Israel during a war was a good thing to do given how many world leaders have visited Ukraine since February 2022, some repeatedly. It would appear that the Israelis thought otherwise.
Or, maybe he's just worried that the arms being supplied to Ukraine over the past year and a half will now be heading to Israel and that Israel has come to the realization that actors don't provide much in the way of useful military advice.
Ukraine's conflict is now page 16 news and the sooner that Zelensky comes to that realization, the better for those of us that have political leaders who have spent billions of of our tax dollars supporting a no-win situation.
My long-term readers are likely aware that George Orwell's 1984 is one of my favourite books, one that I have read many times. Let me provide you with a few quotes from the book that I found compelling and that are particularly pertinent given the recent events in Canada:
"With the deep, unconscious sigh which not even the nearness of the telescreen could prevent him from uttering when his day’s work started, Winston pulled the speakwrite towards him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and put on his spectacles. Then he unrolled and clipped together four small cylinders of paper which had already flopped out of the pneumatic tube on the right-hand side of his desk.
In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston’s arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building....
....As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of ‘The Times’ and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.
What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of ‘The Times’ had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs—to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place. The largest section of the Records Department, far larger than the one on which Winston worked, consisted simply of persons whose duty it was to track down and collect all copies of books, newspapers, and other documents which had been superseded and were due for destruction."
"And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested."
"It might very well be that literally every word in the history books, even the things that one accepted with- out question, was pure fantasy."
And, most importantly:
"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
Winston Smith's sole purpose in the dystopic society described in 1984 was to destroy history and replace it with the version that matched the current government-proclaimed reality, a never-ending process.
Let's look at some background before we get to the main point of this posting. For those of you who are not Canadians (or residents of the United Kingdom), you may not be aware that every word uttered in Canada's Parliament is recorded for posterity in Hansard, the official record of the transcripts of parliamentary debate. In fact, the record is so complete that it even reports nonsensical verbal sounds that are uttered in the chamber, a tradition that began in Britain in the late 18th century. It was implemented to reduce the secrecy that had been part of British political debate, allowing the sweaty masses an insider's view of parliamentary procedures.
In recent days, the world has become very familiar with Canada and the Trudeau government's bungling when a former member of the Waffen-SS, the combat arm of the Shutzstaffel, the much-feared and reviled SS of Hitler's National Socialist Party was formally and publicly recognized for his service in Canada's House of Commons by the now former Speaker of the House as shown here:
After some sober second thought and attention by Members of the Opposition, this caused a great deal of consternation among the ruling Liberals who tossed Speaker Anthony Rota under the proverbial bus by pinning the sole blame on him for this egregious misstep. What isn't as well known is that the ruling Liberals attempted to "memory hole" the entire incident both in writing and in the official video record of the incident, using the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Karina Gould to do the dirty work as shown here:
If the less than honourable Karina Gould had been able to get unanimous consent from all MPs, the record of one of her government's most significant missteps would have been erased from the public record.
Here is the response from Conservative MP Marty Morantz which provides the rationale for voting against Ms. Gould's point of order and sums up my feelings nicely:
"It goes without saying that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. What happened on Friday was shameful and brought embarrassment to this chamber. It was an ugly reminder of what survivors of the Holocaust know too well: that we must never forget. Deleting the text of the Speaker's words from Hansard would...have only one purpose: to try to forget what happened and wash the record clean."
And, for the record, here's what appeared in Hansard for September 21, 2023 despite Ms. Gould's pathetic attempt to rewrite history:
We all know that governments love to alter history, however, I have rarely seen a clearer example of how a government attempts to rewrite history by memory holing the record of an event that will likely have a negative impact on their re-electability in the future should Canadians remember this international embarrassment. The Trudeau government's brazen attempt to change history should concern every voting Canadian.
The ruling class must really think that we are stupid.
I have been an avid follower of the world's political and economic scene since the great gold rush of 1979 - 1980 when it seemed that the world's economic system was on the verge of collapse. I am most concerned about the mounting level of government debt and the lack of political will to solve the problem. Actions need to be taken sooner rather than later when demographic issues will make solutions far more difficult. As a geoscientist, I am also concerned about the world's energy future; as we reach peak cheap oil, we need to find viable long-term solutions to what will ultimately become a supply-demand imbalance.
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