But have a little sympathy for them: they do this not just because it is cynically convenient (though it is), but because this is literally the only way they know how to navigate and influence the world. The post-modern fish swims in a narrative sea, and their first reaction is always to try to control it (through what the CCP calls “discourse power”) because at heart they well and truly believe in the idea of the “social construction of reality,” as Lasch pointed out in the quote at top. If there is no fixed, objective truth, only power, then the mind’s will rules the world. Facts can be reframed as needed to create the story that best produces the correct results for Progress (this is why you will find journalists are now professionally obsessed with “storytelling” rather than reporting facts).
Normally all one need do is recast the dominant narrative of events in such a way as to allow the system to reestablish compliance by enough links in the informational control chains to inspire physical action in meat space – or at least just distract the public until the problem goes away. The problem is that none of this has worked to move the trucks. The Virtual class can’t move the trucks. Smears alone can’t move trucks. All the towing companies in Ottawa have refused to move the trucks. Because, surprisingly, it turns out tow truck drivers also drive trucks for a living. There aren’t enough police to seize the trucks, because the rank and file police in Ottawa have been taking all of their vacation and sick days, mysteriously not showing up for work, or simply resigning. It turns out that police officers tend to also be part of the Physical class, and class solidarity may actually be a thing.
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But the most relevant distinction between Virtuals and Physicals is that the Virtuals are now everywhere unambiguously the ruling class. In a world in which knowledge is the primary component of value-added production (or so we are told), and economic activity is increasingly defined by the digital and the abstract, they have been the overwhelming winners, accumulating financial, political, and cultural status and influence.
In part this is because the ruling class is also a global class, and so has access to global capital. It is global because the world’s city-brains are directly connected with each other across virtual space, and are in constant communication. Indeed their residents have far more in common with each other, including across national borders, than they do with the local people of their own hinterlands, who are in comparison practically from another planet. But the Virtual ruling class has a vulnerability that it has not yet solved. The cities in which their bodies continue to occupy mundane physical reality require a whole lot of physical infrastructure and manpower to function: electricity, sewage, food, the vital Sumatra-to-latte supply chain, etc. Ultimately, they still remain reliant on the physical world. The great brain hubs of the Virtuals float suspended in the expanse of the Physicals, complex arterial networks pumping life-sustaining resources inward from their hosts. So when the Physicals of the Canadian host-body revolted against their control, the Virtual class suddenly faced a huge problem. When the truckers rolled their big rigs, which weigh about 35,000 pounds, up to the political elite’s doorstep, engaged their parking brakes (or removed their wheels entirely), and refused to leave until their concerns were addressed, this was like dropping a very solid boulder of reality in the Virtuals’ front lawn and daring them to remove it without assistance. And because the Virtuals do not yet actually have the Jedi powers to move things with their minds, the truckers effectively called their bluff on who ultimately has control over the world. To simplify, let’s first identify and categorize two classes of people in society, who we could say tend to navigate and interact with the world in fundamentally different ways. The first is a class that has been a part of human civilization for a really long time. These are the people who work primarily in the real, physical world. Maybe they work directly with their hands, like a carpenter, or a mechanic, or a farmer. Or maybe they are only a step away: they own or manage a business where they organize and direct employees who work with their hands, and buy or sell or move things around in the real world. Like a transport logistics company, maybe. This class necessarily works in a physical location, or they own or operate physical assets that are central to their trade.
The second class is different. It is, relatively speaking, a new civilizational innovation (at least in numbering more than a handful of people). This group is the “thinking classes” Lasch was writing about above. They don’t interact much with the physical world directly; they are handlers of knowledge. They work with information, which might be digital or analog, numerical or narrative. But in all cases it exists at a level of abstraction from the real world. Manipulation and distribution of this information can influence the real world, but only through informational chains that pass directives to agents that can themselves act in the physical world – a bit like a software program that sends commands to a robot arm on an assembly line. To facilitate this, they build and manage abstract institutions and systems of organizational communication as a means of control. Individuals in this class usually occupy middle links in these informational chains, in which neither the inputs nor outputs of their role has any direct relationship with or impact on the physical world. They are informational middlemen. This class can therefore do their job almost entirely from a laptop, by email or a virtual Zoom meeting, and has recently realized they don’t even need to be sitting in an office cubicle while they do it. Like many, I have spent the last couple of weeks a bit entranced by the trucker protests happening in Canada (and now around the world, from Paris to Wellington). I initially tried to document here every twist and turn of the Freedom Convoy drama, but found it nearly impossible. Events continue to unfold very quickly. As I write this, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has just invoked the Emergencies Act (i.e. martial law), allowing him to suspend civil liberties and basically do whatever he wants (more on that later) to crush the protests. So they may soon be quelled. Or perhaps not. No one can yet say precisely how all this may end.
But in any case news and commentary detailing the protests can now be found everywhere, so I’m just going to assume you already have a familiarity with what’s happening, as I want to try to distill a few more unique thoughts on why I find these protests so striking. Specifically, why all this seems like such a perfect reflection of the Reality War. In that essay, I noted how from the perspective of those with the most wealth and power, as well as the technocratic managers and the intelligentsia (our “priestly class, keepers of the Gnosis [Knowledge]”), digital technology and global networks seem to have created “an unprecedented opportunity for Theory to wrest control from recalcitrant nature, for liquid narrative to triumph over mundanely static reality, and for all the corrupt traditional bonds of the world to be severed, its atoms reconfigured in a more correct and desirable manner.” In this mostly subconscious vision of “Luxury Gnosticism,” the “middle and lower classes can then be sold dispossession and disembodiment as liberation, while those as yet ‘essential’ working classes who still cling distastefully to the physical world can mostly be ignored until the day they can be successfully automated out of existence.” I also quoted a passage from the late Christopher Lasch’s book The Revolt of the Elites that is worth repeating here: The thinking classes are fatally removed from the physical side of life… Their only relation to productive labour is that of consumers. They have no experience of making anything substantial or enduring. They live in a world of abstractions and images, a simulated world that consists of computerized models of reality – “hyperreality,” as it’s been called – as distinguished from the palatable, immediate, physical reality inhabited by ordinary men and women. Their belief in “social construction of reality” – the central dogma of postmodernist thought – reflects the experience of living in an artificial environment from which everything that resists human control (unavoidably, everything familiar and reassuring as well) has been rigorously excluded. Control has become their obsession. In their drive to insulate themselves against risk and contingency – against the unpredictable hazards that afflict human life – the thinking classes have seceded not just from the common world around them but from reality itself. So let’s consider this using the protests as a lens, and vice versa. The World Economic Forum (WEF), which has met at the Swiss ski resort of Davos every year since its creation in 1971 by German academic and entrepreneur Klaus Schwab, was forced to convert its annual schmooze fest into a virtual event this year due to COVID-19. Of note on the main agenda was a “stakeholder capitalism” panel, which included Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland. The former-journalist-turned-politician has been a fixture at the WEF for years. Rubbing shoulders at Davos with the world’s rich, famous and powerful was one of the inspirations for her 2012 book, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.
Indeed, in her book, Freeland notes that an invitation to Davos “marks an aspiring plutocrat’s arrival on the international scene.” The global elite don’t especially enjoy the glare of publicity on their privileged lifestyles, so much so that Freeland wrote in a 2015 opinion piece in The Guardian: “After my book, Plutocrats, was published in 2012, I was even — and I know this will shock you — disinvited to a Davos dinner party!” If the doors of Davos were closing for Freeland, they swung wide open after her entry into politics in 2013. Indeed, the one-time critic has enjoyed an apotheosis of sorts and since 2019 has sat on the board of trustees of the WEF itself. Other members include Canada’s own Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England; Al Gore, former U.S. vice-president; Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest individual; Larry Fink, head of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment fund; and a slew of other bankers, CEOs, tycoons and celebrities. Notably, Freeland is the only government minister presently on the board. Ominous developments in Canada, where the Canadian government under prime minister Justin Trudeau has now invoked a never before used Emergencies Act (written in 1988) under the pretext of a crisis, so as to try to smash ongoing protests directed at that very same government.
The Emergency Act was designed to cover four types of emergencies, public welfare emergencies, public order emergencies, international emergencies and war emergencies, none of which currently exist in Canada. However, powers under the Emergencies Act allow Trudeau’s government to ban travel, force movement of people, prevent movement of people, and force private companies to do what the government directs. Not surprisingly, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association has come out saying that the invocation of this Emergencies Act is a “threat” to Canada’s democracy and civil liberties. Most shockingly, an Order under the Emergencies Act, revealed by Canada’s deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland, now allows Canadian banks and financial institutions to freeze both personal and corporate bank accounts in Canada. As of Monday 14 February, Canadian banks and other financial service providers are able “to immediately freeze or suspend an account without a court order”, and will be free of liability in doing so. The Order also allows the Canadian government to share information with private banks about bank account holders. The powers also allow the Canadian government to monitor crypto transactions of Canadians. So if you are in Canada, and thought that your bank account deposits and savings were safe and private, think again, as your bank accounts and your savings are now subject to being frozen or suspended. Can it happen to your country? While it is always important to keep some of your assets outside the banking system, ring-fenced from financial repression, banking sector bail-ins and negative interest rates, those in Canada now have another reason – to stop your funds from being literally frozen. This is also a taste of what central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) will look like in the not too distant future, where governments can switch off access to account based CBDCs if citizens are ‘not playing ball'. Saving and investing in physical precious metals allows you to have full ownership of gold and silver bars and coins that if you store at home or store with a non-bank third party vaulting provider, are completely outside the banking system and safe from government and central bank interference. If you think this is a Canadian problem, think again, as both Trudeau and Freeland are very much involved with the elite operated World Economic Forum (WEF) which is angling for a ‘Great Reset’ and a world of surveillance and control. Trudeau is a WEF Young Global Leader and frequent WEF speaker, and Freeland is even one of the board of trustees of the WEF. If protests about civil liberties in Canada can lead to these tyrannical powers being introduced, this can also happen elsewhere, as to quote the WEF’s Klaus Schwab "we penetrate the cabinets” of governments around the world. Be aware, as maybe in your country, the Covid restrictions will be eased soon, there will be more threats on the horizon. Another pandemic, internet hacking or the financial system collapse can or will be the next step. Be prepared and take good care of yourself. China gave a hero’s welcome to Huawei Technologies Co.’s executive Meng Wanzhou as she touched down three years after her arrest in Canada, while two Canadians freed by Beijing returned to their homeland with less fanfare.
“I am finally home after over 1,000 days of suffering,” Meng, wearing a red dress, said tearfully to the cheering crowd after landing at Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport around 10 p.m. local time on Saturday. The event, broadcast live by state media, dominated nine out of the top 10 trending hashtags on the Chinese social media site Weibo. The tallest building in the city lit up with scrolling slogan “Welcome Home, Meng Wanzhou” across its facade. In contrast, Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig arrived to a more low-key reception. The pair landed in Calgary before sunrise on Saturday, accompanied by Dominic Barton, Canada’s ambassador to China. Dressed in blazers and face masks, they were met by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who hugged the pair on the tarmac. Government officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and the nation’s spy agency, tweeted welcome messages to the pair, who were expected to reunite with the families in private.
"The peculiarity of Africa is that it does not have the financial means today to protect and revive its economy like all the other continents have done," French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told RFI radio in May." World finance chiefs agreed in April to boost reserves (SDR) at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by $650 billion and extend a debt-servicing freeze to help developing countries deal with the pandemic, although only $34 billion will be allocated to Africa. "France wants this to go much further by reallocating SDRs that are (scheduled) for developed countries," an official from the French presidency briefed reporters ahead of the summit." Macron has said he believes Africa needs a "New Deal" to give the continent a breath of fresh air. And today, he called on G7 nations to find an agreement as part of efforts to reallocate $100 billion in IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDR) to African states.
So how do we pay for the bailout? Macron told a news conference he would like the sale of gold reserves to help finance this planned aid for Africa. So is Macron about to join the hall of fame of infamous leaders selling gold at just the wrong time? Will the spotprice of Gold be affected as when Gordon Brown, UK Chancellor, sold gold in 1999? Or do you remember the effect of the sell of gold in 2016 by The Bank of Canada? Just look down at the grpah below. Canada, home to some of the world's largest gold-mining companies, recently announced that it had in effect liquidated all of the country's holdings of the shiny metal and is moving to what a government spokesperson described as "easily tradeable" assets. It has been a long process. Canada held 1088 tons of gold in 1955. By 2000, it was down to 46 tons. Today, just 77 ounces remain. This puts Canada in last place - well behind Albania, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, and Papua New Guinea - in the most up-to-date compilation of data on gold reserves compiled by an industry group, the World Gold Council.
Canada's explanation for the sell-off is reasonable enough: actual bullion bars cannot be liquidated as easily as, say, government bonds. And over the long term, central banks and governments have generally gotten a better return by investing in safe assets such as US Treasuries. But the real question is not why Canada has sold its gold; it's why other countries remain so wedded to maintaining - even accumulating - stocks of the precious metal despite the fact that it no longer plays any role in the money supply. The reason some countries hold on to gold may have little to do with sound fiscal policy. Instead, the practice reflects the less tangible or rational weight of history. A look at which countries own the metal - and which countries do not - presents an unexpected pattern. Countries that possess significant reserves tend to have some history as global hegemons, imperial powers or economic powerhouses - or aspirations to such status. In a fascinating paper from 2012, two economists at the University of Santa Cruz, Joshua Aizenman and Kenta Inoue, crunched some numbers and found that "the intensity of holding gold is correlated with 'global power' - by the history of being a past empire". This, they said, is especially true of "countries that are or were the suppliers of key currencies". The US remains No.1, just as it remains the world's biggest economy and the issuer of the most common reserve currency. But the pattern reaches into the distant past. The Netherlands was an imperial heavyweight in the 17th century, but it lost that status long ago. Nonetheless, it holds the 10th largest gold reserves, even though it has a population of only 17 million. Portugal, a country that once possessed an empire that stretched from Brazil to Angola to Macau, has 382 tons of gold, yet only has a population of about 11 million. The better-known imperial powers - Germany, Italy, France, Russia, and of course, Britain, all have gold holdings in the global top 20. The trend extends beyond Europe. Japan, which sought to conquer much of the Pacific in the 20th century, and later became the world's second-largest economy, is ranked No.9 in gold holdings. Taiwan, which became an economic powerhouse in the second half of the 20th century, is ranked 14. Likewise, European powers without a significant history of imperial ambition don't seem to have much interest in gold. Finland, for example, is stuck between Argentina and Bolivia in its current holdings of gold. Ireland is even lower, sandwiched between Latvia and Lithuania. These nations are used to living in the shadow of a much bigger imperial power, and share a common history of having been conquered by those bigger neighbours. But there are newcomers in the top 20, too. As Aizenman and Inoue point out, it's no accident that two countries that have moved from bit players to powerhouses have been buying up gold. China is now ranked No. 6, having accumulated 1762 tons. India is ranked No.11, having amassed 557 tons. China and Indian's gold reserves, the researchers note, "increased in tandem with the sharp rise of their economic power". In other words, they're the latest countries to buy into an unspoken dogma that if you're going to be a heavyweight, you need some heavy metal. Which brings us back to Canada. It has been the plaything of empires, but has never harboured imperial ambitions of its own. And its policymakers have never felt a need to proclaim their greatness by accumulating piles of gold. As they would say to the rest of us who cling to this imperial relic: it's all in your head. The coronavirus that has become a world-wide pandemic may have been created in a “cell-culture experiment” in a laboratory, according to prominent scientists who have conducted ground-breaking research into the origins of the virus.
Flinders University Professor Nikolai Petrovsky has completed a scientific study, currently undergoing peer review, in conjunction with La Trobe University in Victoria, which found COVID-19 was uniquely adapted for transmission to humans, far more than any other animal, including bats. Professor Petrovsky, from the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University who has spent the past 20 years developing vaccines against pandemic influenza, Ebola and animal SARS, said this highly unusual finding left open the possibility that the virus leaked from a laboratory. “The two possibilities which I think are both still open is that it was a chance transmission of a virus from an as yet unidentified animal to human. The other possibility is that it was an accidental release of the virus from a laboratory,” he said. “Certainly we can’t exclude the possibility that this came from a laboratory experiment rather than from an animal. They are both open possibilities.” Professor Petrovsky, who is the Chairman and Research Director of Vaxine Pty Ltd, said COVID-19 has genetic elements similar to bat coronaviruses as well as other coronaviruses. The way coronavirus enters human cells is by binding to a protein on the surface of lung-cells called ACE2. The study showed the virus bound more tightly to human-ACE2 than to any of the other animals they tested. “It was like it was designed to infect humans,” he said. “One of the possibilities is that an animal host was infected by two coronaviruses at the same time and COVID-19 is the progeny of that interaction between the two viruses. “The same process can happen in a petri-dish. If you have cells in culture and you have human cells in that culture which the viruses are infecting, then if there are two viruses in that dish, they can swap genetic information and you can accidentally or deliberately create a whole third new virus out of that system. “In other words COVID-19 could have been created from that recombination event in an animal host or it could have occurred in a cell-culture experiment.” Professor Petrovsky was originally modelling the virus in January to prepare a vaccine candidate. He then turned his attention to “explore what animal species might have been involved in the transmission to humans” to understand the origins of the virus - and had a “surprising” result when none were well-adapted. “We found that the COVID-19 virus was particularly well-adapted to bind to human cells and that was far superior to its ability to bind to the cells of any other animal species which is quite unusual because typically when a virus is well-adapted to an animal and then it by chance crosses to a human, typically, you would expect it to have lower-binding to human cells than to the original host animal. We found the opposite so that was a big surprise,” he said. Scientists worldwide have, to date, overwhelmingly said the virus was more likely originated in a wet-market and was not created in a laboratory. Even the United States Office of National Intelligence ruled out COVID-19 being created in a laboratory. Asked why scientists have had this view, Professor Petrovsky said scientists “try not to be political” and do not want their research impacted adversely by tighter laboratory controls. “We just try to base our findings on facts rather than taking particular political positions but sometimes obviously the alternatives may have unintended consequences,” he said. “For instance, if it was to turn out that this virus may have come about because of an accidental lab release that would have implications for how we do viral research in laboratories all around the world which could make doing research much harder. “So I think the inclination of virus researchers would be to presume that it came from an animal until proven otherwise because that would have less ramifications for how we are able to do research in the future. The alternative obviously has quite major implications for science and science on viruses, not just obviously political ramifications which we’re all well aware of.” Professor Petrovsky said an inquiry needs to start straight away, not when the pandemic is finished. “The idea of putting it off to the pandemic is over, it would be a mistake,” he said. “I’m certainly very much in favour of a scientific investigation. It’s only objective should be to get to the bottom of how did this pandemic happen and how do we prevent a future pandemic…. not to have a witch-hunt.” Pete McGee TORONTO, August 20 -- Convoys of Chinese patriots in Ferraris and other high-end sports cars have been revving up pro-Beijing demonstrations in Canada, home to tens of thousands of Chinese millionaire migrants. Drivers of luxury sports cars – which also included McLarens, Porsches and Aston Martins – waved Chinese flags, gunned their engines and honked their horns to cheers from pro-China demonstrators in Vancouver and Toronto, who were facing off against groups supporting the Hong Kong protest movement. In Vancouver, at the busy intersection of Broadway and Cambie Street, hundreds of rival demonstrators had gathered on Saturday afternoon at a major subway station. Protester Kevin Huang Yi Shuen, who supported the Hong Kong camp, watched as the sports cars repeatedly buzzed the protest scene. He said the scene was a big-money “power play” and “a way of showing force”. One black Ferrari 458 had a Chinese flag covering its bonnet, while the passenger waved another on a three-metre flagpole. It followed a black McLaren 570 with a smaller flag hanging out the window of the driver, who covered his face with his hand. A second group, whose cars included a matt-black convertible Ferrari, drew the attention of police, who spoke to the drivers after they repeatedly honked their horns. Huang said a police officer on a motorcycle chased after another car as it pulled away from the busy intersection, dragster style. Huang, executive director of the non-profit Hua Foundation, which is based in Chinatown and works with Asian diaspora youth, said he doubted if the motorists did their cause any good, if the goal was to convince undecided Canadians to support the pro-China camp. Meanwhile, in Toronto, a protest near the Old City Hall also attracted a line of supercar drivers waving Chinese flags and revving loudly. “Worst Fast & Furious movie ever,” said Stephen Punwasi on Twitter, sharing a video of the scene. Lindsay Brown, a Vancouver based community activist who was visiting Toronto, watched a white BMW M6 gun its engines on Bay Street, creating “the most unbelievable din”. The young driver pumped his fist as his passenger waved a Chinese flag. “The mood was pretty aggressive … The [Chinese] nationalists reacted enthusiastically to the revving – you can hear them whooping and whistling in response,” she said. Canada has attracted huge numbers of Chinese millionaires, under the now-defunct federal immigrant investor programme (IIP) and the still-running Quebec Immigrant Investor Programme (QIIP). Most participants of both schemes who stay in Canada end up living in Vancouver or Toronto. But many others leave the country after obtaining citizenship, federal data shows. The QIIP has an annual application limit of 1,900 families, with the Chinese quota capped at 1,235. Current figures are unavailable, but 65 per cent of the 55,000 arrivals under the QIIP from 2002 to 2012 were Chinese. When the federal IIP shut down in 2014, there was a backlog of 45,000 mainland Chinese applicants and family members in the queue, out of a worldwide total of about 60,000. The IIP and QIIP were for many years the world’s most popular wealth migration vehicles. By 2014, about 200,000 millionaires and family members had moved to Canada under the two schemes. Linda Kim OTTAWA, August 14 -- Chinese applications for Canadian immigration and visitor visas both fell to their lowest levels in recent years after Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Vancouver and Beijing issued a travel warning to its citizens about “arbitrary detention” in Canada. The explosive growth rate in Chinese tourism that had seen mainlander arrivals in Canada nearly quadruple since the start of the decade has also plummeted, official figures show, with potential losses of hundreds of millions of dollars in visitor spending. There were 1,574 mainland Chinese immigration applications in June, the lowest monthly total since March 2015, according to the latest data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). And this February’s 1,754 applications had represented a 45-month low at the time. Jean-Francois Harvey, a Hong Kong-based immigration lawyer, said three mainland Chinese immigration consultants had told him that Meng’s December 1 arrest and the resultant diplomatic chill had had an effect on business, although it was not necessarily a “deal breaker”. "Everywhere we turn, Canada is getting bullied and disrespected" OTTAWA, July 4 -- Nowhere is that more obvious than in how China continues escalating their aggression towards us, while our government refuses to respond with even a shred of strength or resolve. Canada’s so-called ‘leaders’ only seem to have one strategy (if you can even call it that) for dealing with this onslaught: Beg for more meetings, be nice, never push back, never stand up for ourselves, and just hope that the big bad meanies will decide to use compassion and kindness after a while. Of course, that strategy is failing miserably, and only encourages more aggression. The more we look at it, the more we can see the core problem: in a world of lions, Canada is led by sheep. Most Canadians, at least in our own lives, know that when someone treats you like garbage you have to stand up for yourself. Otherwise, everyone else will see that you can be mistreated. It’s really a common-sense thing that most people apply on a day-to-day basis. Unfortunately, our leaders are totally bereft of common-sense. Instead, they act like they’re running a student union at a left-wing university, somehow thinking that every problem can be solved with the right combo of words, and a perfectly calibrated level of ‘wokeness.’ Turns out that doesn’t work in the real world. Sure, Canada’s leaders may think that pre-emptively giving in and being nice is the way to handle things, but if the countries we’re dealing with are willing to use aggression and we aren’t, then Canada is put at an immediate and substantial disadvantage. This isn’t about whether we like or even respect other world leaders as individuals, it’s about recognizing that other countries are exhibiting a level of toughness that we simply don’t see here at home among those in charge. Our leaders appear blind to the fact that Canada has substantial potential power, whether it’s from our productive workforce, our gigantic amount of natural resources, our advanced level of technology, our immense landmass, and the residual respect that remains from our long commitment to our national values of defending freedom. We have a GDP comparable to Russia, we have the world’s most powerful nation as our close ally, and we have the resources the world desperately wants and needs. Other countries need us far more than we need them. Yet, because of the lack of patriotism, and lack of strength exhibited in our leaders (a lack particularly evident among the Trudeau Liberals), we are squandering all of our advantages, and negotiating from a position of weakness. In fact, we aren’t really negotiating at all, since we apparently can’t even get our phone calls returned by the Chinese. People will look back on this era and wonder how a nation with so much potential power and influence managed to become so weak and disrespected, and unless we find some backbone soon, the consequences of our pathetic leadership will reverberate for years and even decades to come. Author: Linda Lim Canada - Prime Minister Justin TrudeauOSAKA, June 29 -- This is Trudeau's fifth G-20 summit after taking power following his Liberal Party's victory in October 2015. Trudeau was born in Ottawa on Christmas Day in 1971 to then Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. From very early in his life, he grew up in the public eye. The 47-year-old graduated from McGill University in 1994 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in literature and continued on to complete a Bachelor of Education degree at the University of British Columbia. He spent several years teaching French and math among other subjects as a schoolteacher. After his younger brother died in an avalanche while skiing in 1998, Trudeau became involved in promoting avalanche safety. The telegenic prime minister entered politics in 2007. He was elected leader of the Liberal Party in April 2013 and attracted support particularly from younger voters with his call for respecting diversity and ensuring fair economic opportunities. He is married to Sophie Gregoire, a former TV and radio host. They have three children. KOROLYOV, June 25 -- The Soyuz MS-11 manned spacecraft with three crewmembers from the International Space Station (ISS) onboard has landed in Kazakhstan in 145 km to the south-east of the city of Zhezkagan, Russia's Mission Control Center said on Tuesday. "We have a landing. The spacecraft carrying Roscosmos' cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA's astronaut Anne McClain and Canadian Space Agency's David Saint-Jacques has landed," the center said. The spacecraft undocked from the ISS on Tuesday at 2:25am Moscow time. Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin, US astronauts Christina Koch and Nick Hague will stay aboard the ISS to continue their mission. The next expedition to the ISS will be launched from the Baikonur spaceport on July 20 by the Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft. It will deliver Russia's cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov, NASA's astronaut Andrew Morgan and European Space Agency's astronaut Luca Parmitano (Italy) to the ISS. |
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