{"id":77874,"date":"2022-02-23T01:43:15","date_gmt":"2022-02-23T07:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=77874"},"modified":"2022-02-23T01:43:15","modified_gmt":"2022-02-23T07:43:15","slug":"77874","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=77874","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

When Boring People Turn Dangerous: Canada’s Insane Power Grab<\/a><\/p>\n

On Christmas Eve, 2018,\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/em>writer Andrew Ross Sorkin published, \u201cHow Banks Unwittingly Finance Mass Shootings<\/a>.\u201d Chronicling the credit card history of the man who killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida Sorkin noted Omar Mateen had not merely spent $26,532 on weapons and ammo in the eight months before the 2016 attack, but had wondered if his doing so had raised red flags:<\/p>\n

Two days before Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 more at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, he went on Google and typed \u201cCredit card unusual spending\u2026\u201d His web browsing history chronicled his anxiety: \u201cCredit card reports all three bureaus,\u201d \u201cFBI,\u201d and \u201cWhy banks stop your purchases.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

He needn\u2019t have worried. None of the banks, credit-card network operators or payment processors alerted law enforcement officials about the purchases he thought were so suspicious.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sorkin\u2019s piece ended up being an argument in favor of credit-card companies, payment processors, banks, and others working together to bring about a\u00a0Minority Report-<\/em>style panacea in which society\u2019s dangerous folk could be cyber-identified and stopped before they commit horrific acts. At one point he quoted George Brauchler, the District Attorney who prosecuted the Century 16 movie shooter in Aurora Colorado, James Holmes:<\/p>\n

\u201cDo I wish someone from law enforcement had been able to go to his door and knock on his door and figure out a way to talk their way into it or to freak him out?\u201d he said of Mr. Holmes. \u201cYeah, absolutely.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ve never owned a gun and have been sympathetic to gun control ideas for as long as I can remember. Sorkin, however, was not talking about gun control. He was theorizing a quasi-privatized vision of social control that would bypass laws by merging surveillance capitalism and law enforcement.<\/p>\n

In a rhetorical trick that\u2019s since become common, he described how the failure of companies like Visa to block Mateen\u2019s purchases made them \u201cenablers of carnage.\u201d Clearly, someone made the mistake of letting Sorkin see Sam Raimi\u2019s\u00a0Spider-Man,\u00a0<\/em>and Cliff Robertson now whispers from the beyond to him too. If those with power to act don\u2019t stop wrongdoing, aren\u2019t they just shirking their great responsibility?<\/p>\n

By the way, this same Sorkin once suggested he wouldn\u2019t stop at arresting Edward Snowden, but go after the reporter who broke his story, too. \u201cI would arrest him and now I\u2019d almost arrest Glenn Greenwald, the journalist\u2026 he wants to help him get to Ecuador,\u201d he\u00a0said<\/a>, on CNBC\u2019s\u00a0Squawk Box<\/em>. It\u2019s amazing how selective one can be in one\u2019s authoritarian leanings. After Goldman, Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein appeared to commit perjury in 2011 when he told the Senate, \u201cWe didn\u2019t bet against our clients,\u201d Sorkin rushed an apologia into print saying \u201cMr. Blankfein wasn\u2019t lying,\u201d failing to remind audiences that his\u00a0Dealbook\u00a0<\/em>blog at the\u00a0Times\u00a0<\/em>was\u00a0sponsored by\u2026 Goldman, Sachs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sorkin\u2019s Visa piece is suddenly relevant again, after fellow former finance reporter Chrystia Freeland \u2014 someone I\u2019ve known since we were both expat journalists in Russia in the nineties \u2014 announced last week that her native Canada would be making Sorkin\u2019s vision a reality. Freeland arouses strong feelings among old Russia hands. Before the Yeltsin era collapsed, she had consistent, remarkable access to gangster-oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky, who appeared in her\u00a0Financial Times\u00a0<\/em>articles described as aw-shucks humans just doing their best to make sure \u201cbig capital\u201d maintained its \u201cnecessary role\u201d in Russia\u2019s political life. \u201cBerezovsky was one of several financiers who came\u00a0together in a last-ditch attempt to keep the Communists out of the\u00a0Kremlin\u201d was typical Freeland fare in, say, 1998.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Then the Yeltsin era collapsed in corrupt ignominy and Freeland immediately wrote a book called\u00a0Sale of the Century<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>that identified Yeltsin\u2019s embrace of her former top sources as the \u201coriginal sin\u201d of Russian capitalism, a \u201cFaustian bargain\u201d that crippled Russia\u2019s chance at true progress. This is\u00a0Freeland on Yeltsin\u2019s successor in 2000<\/a>. Note the \u201cYes, Putin has a reputation for beating the press, but his economic rep is solid!\u201d passage at the end:<\/p>\n

It looks as if we’re about to fall in love with Russia all over again\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Compared to the ailing, drink-addled figure Boris Yeltsin cut in his later
\nyears, his successor, Vladimir Putin, in the eyes of many western observers,
\nseems refreshingly direct, decisive and energetic\u2026 Tony Blair, who has already paid
\nPutin the compliment of a visit to Russia and received the newly installed
\npresident in Downing Street in return, has praised him as a strong leader
\nwith a reformist vision. Bill Clinton, who recently hot-footed it to Russia,
\noffered the equally sunny appraisal that \u201cwhen we look at Russia today . . .
\nwe see an economy that is growing . . . we see a Russia that has just
\ncompleted a democratic transfer of power for the first time in a thousand
\nyears.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

To be sure, some critics have lamented Putin\u2019s support for the bloody second
\nwar in Chechnya, accused him of eroding freedom of the press\u2026 and
\nworried aloud that his KGB background and unrepenting loyalty to the honor
\nof that institution could jeopardize Russia\u2019s fragile democratic
\ninstitutions. But many of even Putin’s fiercest prosecutors seem inclined to
\ngive him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the economy\u2026<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Years later, she is somehow Canada\u2019s Finance Minister, and what another friend from our Russia days laughingly describes as \u201cthe Nurse Ratched of the New World Order.\u201d At the end of last week, Minister Freeland explained that in expanding its Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) program, her government was \u201cdirecting Canadian financial institutions to review their relationships with anyone involved in the illegal blockades.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Emergencies Act contains language beyond the inventive powers of the best sci-fi writers. It defines a \u201cdesignated person\u201d \u2014 a person eligible for cutoff of financial services \u2014 as someone \u201cdirectly or indirectly\u201d participating in a \u201cpublic assembly that may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace.\u201d Directly or\u00a0indirectly?<\/em><\/p>\n

She went on to describe the invocation of Canada\u2019s Emergencies Act in the dripping-fake tones of someone trying to put a smile on an insurance claim rejection, with even phrases packed with bad news steered upward in the form of cheery hypotheticals. As in,\u00a0The names of both individuals and entities as well as crypto wallets?<\/em>\u00a0Have been shared?<\/em>\u00a0By the RCMP with financial institutions?<\/em>\u00a0And accounts have been frozen?<\/em>\u00a0As she confirmed this monstrous news about freezing bank accounts, Freeland burst into nervous laughter, looking like Tony Perkins sharing a cheery memory with \u201cmother\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Regardless of your political views, this is rather disturbing. Next up, CBDC.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Regardless of your political views, this is rather disturbing. Next up, CBDC. pic.twitter.com\/62PQ80dAxw<\/a><\/p>\n

— Steve Saretsky (@SteveSaretsky) February 18, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n