The Yellow Vest Movement that began in France, is spreading. It appeared also in Belgium and it spread to Canada as well. The French arrested the leaders of the Yellow Vest Movement calling them an anti-government charging them for organizing an unauthorized protest, as authorities adopt a tougher approach to try to curb the demonstrations. During the weekend of December 15th, mimicking the Yellow Vest movement in France, protests have formed all over Canada. These are peaceful protests, unlike in France, but they have continued every weekend in various cities such as Toronto, Halifax, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Calgary etc, especially in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Alberta has long been known as the oil province of Canada and is highly commodity driven. With NDP (New Democratic Party) preventing the expansion of the TransMountain Pipeline
from Alberta’s Edmonton to BC’s Burnaby after the project has already been approved by the federal government back in 2013, many people are unemployed. With oil in Western Canada
(Western Canadian Select) hitting $11.43 a barrel in November, companies simply cannot afford to stay in business. Combining this with the announcement that the price of vegetables
increased 4%-6% as of January 1st, it’s no wonder that many Canadians are frustrated.

This is also apparent as Calgary voted a resounding NO on a bid for hosting the 2026 Winter Olympics on November 13th. An estimate of $5.11 billion was announced with additional extra
costs which were never disclosed, people voted no to the increase the taxation in order to pay for it. The wrong event at the wrong time and people simply can’t afford to foot the bill.
Bottom line, too many taxes impact quality of life and no one will take to the streets when they are fat and happy.

What’s important here is that not only has Canada joined the Yellow Vest Movement, but it’s still going strong every weekend, Christmas, New Years, the protests against rising socialism
continue. Trudeau might have his work cut out for him before the next election in Canada in October 2019.

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Merkel has come out and said that “Nation states must today be prepared to give up their sovereignty.” This is what you have been saying that the agenda is to federalize Europe. Would you care to elaborate on her latest statement?

Thank you from Berlin

PH

ANSWER: Merkel has stepped down as leader of the CDU. She knows that she is on the way out. She hopes to cling to her position of power until she is dragged out by the hair. This statement is indeed the behind the curtain view. But she qualified that statement insofar as yielding sovereignty to Brussels over especially migration. This is a shot across the bow at the rising nationalism. You must look at the entire statement she made in order to expose the thinking process.

Merkel condemned any notion that Germany should join a fast-growing number of nations pulling out of the migration agreement. Even Australia pulled out of the UN migration agreement. She said that “there were [politicians] who believed that they could decide when these agreements are no longer valid because they are representing The People”. What is interesting is how she is splitting a democratic form of government which represents the people and one of an anti-democratic position because politicians know better than the people. She continued to remark that “the people are individuals who are living in a country, they are not a group who define themselves as the [German] people.” She holds the position that migration is inevitable, necessary and desirable. She refuses to admit that allowing in the refugees was a mistake.

Her reasoning states that nationalism “is not patriotism, because patriotism is when you include others in German interests and accept win-win situations.” The fact that is an anti-democratic position behind the curtain is evidenced by the fact that the FrenchPresident Emmanuel Macron, also recently stated that “patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism [because] nationalism is treason”.

Macron travelled to Berlin and addressed the Bundestag that France and Germany have “obligation not to let the world slip into chaos and to guide it on the road to peace.” He added that “Europe must be stronger… and win more sovereignty” in order to suppress in truth the riots seeking to remove him in France. Both Macron and Markel are pitching that all EU member states should now surrender national sovereignty to Brussels over “foreign affairs, migration, and development” in addition to “an increasing part of our budgets and even fiscal resources.” Macron has sought and obtained an exemption to run a higher deficit than the EU rules allow because of the tax protests in France.

What is going on here is a tag-team. Merkel and Macron are advocating the surrender of sovereignty because they then can blame Brussels and not shoulder the responsibility for the economic disaster Europe is heading into for 2020/2021. We have two politicians whose days are numbered advocating the federalization of Europe that they previous swore would never happen.

The major influential German news weekly, Der Spiegel, has suspended two of its senior editors following the scandal involving a reporter Claas Relotius admitted faking stories for years. Relotius, who is 33, resigned after admitting that he had made up stories and invented protagonists in more than a dozen articles in the magazine’s print and online editions. Relotius was also named journalist of the year by CNN back in 2014. This has provided another whole dimension to the Fake News issue. Here, instead of institutional bias such as CNN, Fox, New York Times, and the Washington Post, we have an individual just creating news. He managed to get away with it for so long because the readers wanted to believe what he wrote.