Last night I finally got slightly interested in the Canadian trucker protest and decided to read a little bit about it. I got bored almost immediately because there's really nothing much to know about it, but one interesting thing was learning more about the folks who are the leaders of the protest. Or the founders. Or spokespeople. Or something. Anyway, these names kept popping up:
- Benjamin Dichter
- James Bauder
- Tamara Lich
- Chris Barber
- Pat King
This is one weird crowd, and I couldn't tell if they really even work together. In any case, as I browsed through various pieces about the convoy I came across countless descriptions like these:
- Worried about the "growing Islamization of Canada."
- Thinks Western Canada should secede.
- QAnon conspiracy theorist
- Believes COVID-19 is a scam.
- Was fined $14,000 in October for violating provincial public health measures.
- "Wait 'til the real bullets start flying."
- Evangelical alt-right extremists.
- Believes COVID virus comes from a Chinese lab and George Soros was involved.
- Says vaccine mandates are "tyranny at its finest."
- Has a garage full of Confederate flags.
- Loves bitcoin.
- Speaks of an immigration plot that would see the “depopulation of the Caucasian race.”
- Holocaust denier.
I dunno. Protests against vaccine mandates are all well and good—Canada is a free country, after all—but any protest run by people like this is bound to implode sooner or later. Besides, they all say they're vaccinated. Somehow I don't think vaccine mandates are what they really care about.
There's a faction in the extreme right, of which Steve Bannon is an ideological leader, which holds that the institutions of "western civilization" have been so degraded, they must all be destroyed before the civilization itself can be rebuilt. Stunts like the truckers' convoy are all good, in this view, because they reveal the impotence of the state in the face of open defiance, thus encouraging more lawlessness and social breakdown. Eventually, things will be so bad a strong authoritarian leader can take command, root out the stench of liberalism, and restore the glory that was pre-Enlightenment white Christendom.
Problem is, that won't work. "White" Christiandom had its day. The origin of the indo European tribes into Roman Papist monarchies was but a blip of history. It wasn't that great and hardly great for "white people" compared to prepapist era. Capitalism that the jews invented has run its course.
They should give it up and read about the Legend of Ragnarok.
Capitalism was not invented by Jews; it predates them. There were merchants and traders of various sorts in Ur of the Chaldees, and in Sumeria, and in Babylon. The Phoenicians built an empire mainly on trade. Capitalism almost certainly predates the invention of money; money was invented to facilitate trade because barter is too clumsy.
Please don't feed the racist, anti-semitic semi-literate troll. It only leaves its droppings to get attention.
The assertion that the Jews invented capitalism is not anti-semitic. I would construe it as complimentary. However, it's not true.
Dude, why the antisemitism?
Kevin, c'mon, man.
Bannon is a globalist Zionist.
It's hard to say they're wrong. We do need a vastly different society. But their vision of a certainty includes me dead.
Kind of looks like they're onto something. I wouldn't have guessed that you could blockade key trade corridors with a few trucks and the government would just sit there, paralyzed, making idle demands for days, either unwilling or unable to restore order.
A government can tolerate a bunch of goofballs occupying city parks to hold poetry slams no matter how many local ordinances it violates, because that kind of activity doesn't call the state's legitimacy into question.
But a government that'll let a few crazy randos shut down their trade with their largest trade partner and most powerful ally is signaling to it's people that it can't be relied upon and needs to be replaced with one that can deliver order.
Eventually, the people will put the crazy randos in charge, if it turns out that only the crazy randos can control the crazy randos.
Doug Ford's term as Canadian PM is going to be lit. Like his brother's non-Biden-issue crackpipe.
It isn’t just that the Canadians allowed vital trade routes to be blockaded. They also allowed their capital city to be occupied by people of whom the government admitted it was afraid and helpless against. It wouldn’t surprise me if this became a regular thing.
And it’s a powerful weapon for conservatives because they are aware that even though the crisis is of their own making, it’s also something they can readily exploit. Increasingly, Canadians will see that there’s only one political group that matters and can protect them; if you are a liberal, your fellow liberals or even centrists are not going to protect you, only conservatives can protect you (in the sense that paying the Mafia protection money only protects you from the Mafia).
"Eventually, the people will put the crazy randos in charge, if it turns out that only the crazy randos can control the crazy randos."
Exactly. When you roll in Kevin's recent post about the median voter, this is how you get an authoritarian government. Most people want some semblance of order so they can go about their lives. Even the most vaccinated and masked-up responsible people are well and fully over having their lives disrupted and experiencing compassion fatigue for "freedom" idiots spreading diseases all over the place.
Did you not catch Glemm Yungkins's latest Black History Month faux pas, musidentifying the State Senator who gave a great speech?
It seems even the most puttogether falangists are abject incompetents.
They sound like Barry Hussein Osama's ghostwriter Bill Ayers.
Brother, this is a place for relatively intelligent discourse. I know you think you're funny, and you love trolling the libs, but this crap is just stupid. I mean, retarded. But you keep on being you.
No, I enjoy hectoring the Left & the Falange (d/b/a Green-Brown Coalition).
Personally, I am a terminal shitlib, whose most frequent donation recipients on ActBlue are or were Beto O'Rourke, TERRIBLE CANDIDATE Jon Ossoff, & Krooked Kop Kamala Harris.
Exactly. I mean, this is March on Rome 1922 kind of shit where frightened King Emmanuel III gave in to the Fascists thinking he had to prevent violence when even a small amount police enforcement would have prevented Mussolini from taking power in the first place. The Fascists basically bluffed their way into taking power by threating violence.
Because that's basically what's going on in Ottawa. The police don't feel they have enough manpower to enforce the law and Trudeau doesn't want to call out the army (even though his father did just that in 1970 against FLQ terrorists) because of the fear of violence and destruction. Trudeau is just hoping after a short this just all goes away but it won't if weakness is perceived and exploited. Nor does he understand most Canadians would applaud him if he stood up to them and make them, the far Right, the disruptors and terrorists, not just the anarchist Left.
Remember CHAZ in Seattle? Or demonstrators who have commandeered George Floyd Square in Minneapolis? Or in Canada when indigenous protestors seize roads in tribal lands? Remember how freaked out so-called conservatives were about such things two years ago. Now you have a sitting U.S. Senator hoping all U.S. cities get clogged up by "trucker protests" which are nothing of the kind. What you're seeing, of course, is not conservatism but a kind of mob rule from the right ala Blackshirts or Bornwshirts designed but for one purpose: to take power. That's the only reason these protests are taking place and those who dare call themselves conservatives have to ask themselves are they going to acquiese to this or stand up for the law? Luckily for Trudeau Doug Ford made his decision responsibly. It's too bad the rest of Tories in Canada went the opposite direction (if anything the trucker protests did topple the leadership of the CPC) making themselves look like fools and anarchists. But that's the difference between being a responsible leader and just being potted plants blowing in the wind.
For the past 20 years I've been thinking that the Republican party, which is run by people like that, is bound to implode. But look where we are.
What is Fox News viewership like in Canada? I think I would go with your usual root cause analysis on the "Freedom Convoy."
Ask them about Jewish Capitalism......my guess you get a blank stare. These people are just paid lackeys of the elite. The problem is, they are fighting regional mandates that won't exist in the coming weeks. A dialectical group financed by globalist billionaires.
Just kill them and call them globalist traitors.
PLEASE don't feed the troll.
Again, where is the trolling??? Global "right wing" elites have decided to make certain issues like vaccine mandates political issues to support their dialectical nonsense. Mandates likely lifted soon. Not all political plays work.
They have rich billionaire backers. Their goal??? International slaves states. Remember how Trump projects onto his political opponents. They do it in spades. When white's are returning to serfdom, the veil will be lifted.
Don’t feed the obviously brain-damaged racist, aka “troll.”
Kevin, please, this sort of thing drives away readers.
We don't want or need to host antisemitism.
A couple of random points:
1) I can't predict the future, but I do think it's highly probable that Canada's tough, sensible firearms regulations mean the endgame of the blockade is less likely to end in serious bloodshed than a similar event would south of the border.
2) There's zero question the blockaders are receiving American funding and support. Still, Canadians mustn't be complacent: The USA doesn't have a monopoly on right-wing, authoritarianism-tinged, conspiracy-mongering populism. Most Western countries these days now have their own home-grown version. (I do see an understandable tendency on the part of some Canadians to write this episode off as a largely American right wing plot; I too would probably wish this were the case if I were Canadian.)
Populism???? This is elitism. Pushed by billionaires.
It is international nativism supporting fasc-holes everywhere.
Eh, nativism nope. You simply refuse to admit they are elitist
Yep.
For most yeah, but the hardcore rightists have their own little fortification. That's the one that will blow up when the police come. At least the Canadians can count on their police not to side with the rebels wholesale.
And at least their police can count on having superior firepower.
So far, the police have been siding with the fascists...
NBC online had a report saying their far-flung supporters want to disrupt the Super Bowl but they don't think they have enough time to plan it with only 3 days to go.
And I thought: what wimps! To bring LA freeways to a standstill requires at most two, perhaps three, trucks stopped at strategic points on the 10 and the 405.
But then of course, pissing off fans of the Super Bowl may be getting exactly the wrong audience mad. I guess I'd be interested in whether Steve Bannon is egging them on in this regard, but not interested enough to actually research it.
Of all the dumbass places to disrupt, nothing could be more counterproductive than messing with the Super Bowl.
Their rich billionaire backers want to destroy countries and replace it with monarchies with them as king. Bannon knighted as part of the global aristocracy. The rest of us Serfs. You don't think white's ain't gonna pay???? Think harder.
These guys are the Zionists in general. No matter what they think. Nazis were their left wing opposites.
Roger Goodell & the Shield have been waiting for thus moment ever since Super Bowl XXXVI in New Orleans. Sure, they never thought the evildoers they would have to put down would look like Cal Mc Nair's idiot man-children & Pittsburgh Steelers diehards from the hollers of West VA, but it will do. NFL Security will smite any & all interlopers who attempt to disrupt the Church of Gridironology.
Not only are similar ’protests’ beginning to assemble in the US, but also in some Western European countries, especially France and Belgium, where major EU institutions are hosted. Hmm, all these countries are NATO, just when Putin is threatening war in Europe ….
It should be easy to track money flows.
As Ween sang, "No no, I can't put my finger on it...."
Some harpy bitch told us 25 years ago about a vast global right wing conspiracy out to get her and her husband. But we all laughed at her and then crucified her for her poor email management skills.
Oh well.
It appears that the "wheels of justice" in Canada have a few things in common with those in the United States: they move exceedingly slow. Lawbreaking and disruption must continue, unabated, for week after week after week, regardless of the damage being inflicted, because of various rights of the accused. Once they're actually "accused", the built-in delays in jurisprudence will kick in, which includes asking for further delays. And all this is repeated for each round of appeals. if at first they don't prevail.
Safeties that have been built in to give a break to the less privileged and unjustly accused are exploited for the benefit of the proud, blatant lawbreakers. Trumoism in action.
Like the horrors of social media, we currently have no defences. None. Nor does anyone have any ideas of how to fix things, other than authoritarianism.
Somehow the observance of those ‘safeties’ by the authorities seems to correlate with complexion, see BLM or Wetʼsuwetʼen First Nation pipeline blockade, for example.
This.
BLM had food and aid trucks repeatedly damaged, towed, tires slashed by police (also damaging unrelated vehicles that just happened to be parked legally near protests)
And yet, there's no reports of police doing this to these fascists.
My apologies! The long screed wasn't meant as a reply to you; it was supposed to be standalone. Once again, this commenting system really stinks.
But, while I'm at it, thanks for the shout-out to another potentially great President who was defeated by the undemocratic (and un-Democratic!) "electoral college."
+1
France should be interesting. Saw a line of light armored cars and lots of gendarmes. Already using teargas. I wonder if Macron will turn the CRS loose.
Yeah, the French have a special branch of the police to deal with these "manifestations".
These would be them. Famous for fighting the left. Made the streets of Paris run red with blood. Could be 1968 all over again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnies_Républicaines_de_Sécurité
The Yellow Vests's Russian checks cleared, again?
This is a fantastic article about the situation in Ottawa and the organized extremists who are using it as a front,
https://theline.substack.com/p/dispatch-from-the-ottawa-front-sloly
The brawler faction is not exactly astroturfing, although there are some elements that are similar. Parasitism? A good word as any and descriptive of the type of folks involved. The hosts themselves? They are the Deluded (in a general way, not the spades way).
It seems more and more of these folks appear daily. Or is it that technology has amplified the same fringe that's always been there?
Has Gavin Mc Innes come home to lead the revolution?
I'm sure he's been itching, but the grooming required for that wondrous facial hair takes a lot of time. I speak from experience.
Rollie Fingers Cosplay > Goose Gossage Cosplay
They’ve always been with us. OC was famous for having Birchers and actual Nazis. The KKK was the dominant political and social force in the states of the former confederacy and much of the Midwest. Crazed hard-right anti_communist Texas oil billionaires have been a staple for decades.
I can’t quite put my finger on it but there’s something different today. I think it started with Newt Gingrich bringing far right people from militias to congress and treating them like heros. And how they saw the Democrats walking soft around those people. They were out and proud and, most importantly, there wasn’t any pushback. And the rise of Fox News, also with no pushback, has been an immensely powerful driver of the far right’s rise and Trump’s election.
The more we learn from the January 6th committee, the more the Capitol riot seems to have the same character - a mob of fools covering for organized groups with an agenda ….
How political conservatism has always worked, but now it's several layers deep, delusion manipulated, then that delusion manipulated, then the next one until you have generations of nonsense built up like an unpayable debt, and this happens, in the US, Canada, France, Brexit, and that can be manipulated by characters who've never had a breath of decency in their entire histories and who recognize in this a validation of a thousand years or more of utter failure.
I mean Russia, of course.
I read this too. Very good article about what's going on in Ottawa.
I've seen reporting (Ben Collins, NBC News) that much of the social media spurring this protest (and similar ones elsewhere) are from accounts created in a variety of other countries. The civilized world really needs to figure out how to handle these foreign dis-information campaigns.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/us-trucker-convoy-picks-momentum-foreign-meddling-adds-fray-rcna15932
Those Albertans should go back to Texas where they came from.
+1
It is *supposed* to be about vaccines, where in fact it is Trumps Mobile Wall .
So the Canadians are protecting their southern border....ok, can't really blame them.
😉
"Loves bitcoin"
More and more this tells you all you need to know about a person. The right-wing politics. The racism. The paranoia. The susceptibility to conspiracy theories. .
The One Simple Trick Theory of Big Structural Change. Of course, as any MAGAhead should know from The Leader's dalliance with Stormy Daniels, no trick can ever be simple.
This is an interesting moment. Can the US right wing figure out how to protest like this and disrupt the economy? Is this the model for the next phase of the trumpist coup?
I don't know.
You tell me, Yuri.
YES! It is the model.
“We will bury you!” So they say.
Aside from the presence of some Nazi & Confederate flags, I read this yesterday on the CBC site yesterday, couldn't locate it in today's news, so found it through Google:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6345854
Just as in the US, there are many participants with military training. The last I saw, the Christian funding site used after GoFundMe blocked these people has also shut down availability of donations. Hoping that violence can be limited.
Kevin is correct, it isn’t about being vaccinated. 80% of Canadians have 2 vaccinations as do Canadian truckers. It also isn’t rural vs. urban as my province, Newfoundland and Labrador is rural, 600,000 people in an area the size of CA and 95% of us have one vaccination and close to that for both. Atlantic Canada, in general is rural and well vaccinated having managed the pandemic via mask mandates and other restrictions much better than the rest of Canada, only omicron spread widely. So where do the protesters come from and what do they want? They are simply Canada’s version of the loonie right who don’t like the government telling them what to do. But Canada isn’t about to rescind national health care, or it’s strict firearm regulations (one must have a permit and training to buy one, and one cannot have a handgun in their possession unless driving back/forth to a firing range). None of that’s going away. As an American (now duel), when I first lived in Canada I read a book on Canadian history and I summarized it to a Canadian friend: “The French hate the English and vice versa, the East hates the West and vice versa but they all hate the Americans more”. He smiled and wholeheartedly agreed. The protesters are the ones who don’t hate the US more. Essentially, they are not Canadian other than by birth, hence the Confederate flags which have zero relevance to Canadian history and culture.
The interesting problem here is the idea of “leaders”. This is a thoughtful essay on it: https://quillette.com/2022/02/02/smearing-a-whole-protest-movement-as-fascistic-will-come-back-to-haunt-the-grass-roots-canadian-left/
Explain "thoughtful." It's an essay arguing not to think unfavorably about Nazis and Klansmen, you fucktwad.
Fucking Quillette:
The on-the-ground experience of regular folks participating will have been that of being called Nazis, traitors, Klansmen, bigots, and so forth. Not only will this alienate the participants from Canadian society; it will make them look less unfavourably on others who are called Nazis and Klansmen. .... As someone who has been smeared as a transphobe, homophobe, pedophile, white supremacist, racist, and ableist in the past year and a half ... I can no longer simply accept the opinion of centre-left media on whether someone is a dangerous, bigoted member of the alt-Right.
Pro tip: If you don't want to be called Nazis and Klansmen, don't go to protests where they're waving swastikas and Confederate flags. Du kannst nicht mit den Nazis ins Bett gehen ohne ein Nazi zu werden. You can't sleep with the Nazis and not be one.
Well, considering these people are opposite of Nazis philosophy, why do they use their name???? This has been a problem since the 80's. Instead they choose to romanticize Nazi history into Zionism. Yet, the left hegelian, nature worship, New Agey Nazis were closer to the hippies.
The CSA was a De Rothschild scam from the start. Because supposed "white" guys ran it, it was great.......You see the problem? It's just marketing. Pushed by billionaires.
To me, “thoughtful” includes calling someone a “fucktwad”, and being open to not-maximally-uncharitable interpretations of others’ actions.
*not* calling lol
Some Joseph Harbin-style deep analysis here: https://twitter.com/Brian_Dell/status/1492781382845665280?s=20
I suspect domestic violence or recent divorce would also pop up for many of these people. Seems to be a theme among them.
But enough about Donda 2.
... I wonder if Cube is going to sneak Ye into the halftime show....
These folks are ignorant, mephitic grandstanders who simply want to have their name in the paper. They should be jailed.
https://theline.substack.com/p/dispatch-from-the-ottawa-front-sloly
The civil wars begin?
My encounter at the site intrigued me. I made some calls. My sources on the ground are pretty good in the sense of federal politics, but not great in terms of the local governance. Still, each call I made went similarly: the police are very much aware of the site, and they are very worried about the presence of a hard-right-wing, organized faction that isn't there to protest mandates and vaccine passports, but to directly create conflict with the government. This hard-right element probably includes some non-Canadians, here for the party. The broader complaints of the protesters are a cover for the group seeking open conflict. Most of the convoy protesters aren’t part of this smaller, nastier group, nor linked to it in any overt way. Many of them will think any concern about it at all is just some MSM lamestream media conspiracy.
This is going to be fun to watch.
They are the conspiracy. That is their problem. Frauds of a fraud.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-situation-in-canada-is-worse-than-it-looks
Lets note, half of the group you listed are mixed race. Much of Western Canada is.
One's parentage doesn't impact their ability to be fascist.
Or antisemite.
Gee whiz, you would never know this from the mainstream TV media coverage. The general impression I get from them is that this resembles a labor action like the old strikes of the 1960s and 1970s. I wondered if there were any truckers who dared defy the blockade, which would inevitably result in them being attacked as "scabs." Turns out that most truckers don't support them, and neither do truckers unions (Teamsters in the U.S.). Why aren't the TV talking heads informing the public that these are QAnon and neo-Nazi wackos, and that the vast majority of truckers are not participating? I guess the big conflict narrative, complete with noisy video, is just too juicy.
Why doesn't the "Lame Stream Media" report that trucking unions are opposed to the blockade? What, and tar themselves as union-supporting librulz? Closest thing to Communists? That said, you raise an excellent point, and we all ought to complain to every media outlet that censors itself that way.
How can it be possible that the Canadian government needs a court order to remove cars and trucks blocking access to a vitally important bridge? Could I just stop my car anywhere in the middle of the road in Canada and just leave it there for weeks while the government gets its paperwork together to have my car towed? This just seems insane.
Does anything have to go thru the gouverneur-general? & does BoJo have any sway over that person's ability to act?
Could see the UK CONS abetting their NAFTEXIT allies in Canada to fuck shit up for the people who are in the street.
Surely, the "rule of law" can't be a suicide pact, can it?
I don't know deep details but I do know that they need specific authority for some unusual situations, like in this case where they want to establish punitive fines and take drastic action. People there have the right to protest and use the highways, don't have the right to block it, but peremptory official action is limited in most situations. And especially when the people at the center of it aren't Native people, as here.
Also, it matters that Canadian cops don't have the level of tactical equipment ours do. The local ones need backup from Ontario Provincial Police and eventually RCMP, who normally don't do much policing in Ontario. That needed to be set up for this morning's operations at the bridge.
If the bridge and other crossing situations were up to me, I'd give the blockaders fair warning and then bulldoze all the vehicles off the side of the road and start fining owners for not removing the wreckage. They could do that on the flat terrain near Windsor, and at Coutts and in Manitoba (and reportedly at Cornwall now). But they'll tow in an orderly manner, most likely.
Logistics and manpower are the big problems in Ottawa. Streets are narrow, trucks are almost impossible to move without cooperation (wheels locked is the default, for one thing), and Ottawa has about half the cops it should have for a city its size. Jurisdiction is very complicated there too because so much of the city is federally-owned and/or overseen by a separate capital commission. I think organizers planned on exploiting that complication.
To me this reeks of the manufactured chaos the Bannonites want, as kenalovell says upthread, and the cast of characters Kevin lists tends to affirm that for me. There is a real lunatic fringe up there and some of them are more extreme than our own. Centered in Alberta, which has a lot of other grievances too, but found all over.
The linked reporter's work is good. He filed an earlier one that was very sharp on local politics (I've spent a lot of time in Ottawa) but really weak on the protestors because he was mostly downtown. His trip out to the ballpark opened his eyes pretty wide and I think he has a good handle on them now.
A lot of manpower will be needed just to contain the people now in Ottawa, let alone clear them out. The ballfield is right in town near major highways and commuter routes, and the overflow area they opened up a couple of days ago is across town but also very near other major routes and astride access to the single-lane main parkway to the airport. Opening that site was a blunder-- they should be sending them to the military base at Petawawa or something like that. Or maybe the racetrack lot way south of town (though it's kind of close to the airport). They just don't have the humanpower they need to maintain checkpoints, I don't think, and imo that's one big source of the original occupation.
Anyway the situation in Ottawa is really, really bad in the sense that it could take several weeks to clear the vehicles out, if the protestors/occupiers don't decide to leave on their own, and as Gurney writes in the linked piece, there are people in the crowd who could make for either a long and ugly siege at the ballpark or real violence.
Chaos has been very effectively manufactured there.
The RCMP are definitely as equipped as US cops.
Yes, but their ability to operate inside Ontario is very limited under normal circumstances so that kind of equipment would need to be moved in. There's also a lot of red tape to be cleared before they can do much. Reports from the bridge today do mention some equipment of that kind and say that cops were there in really large numbers, including local forces and OPP, which probably also has some of that equipment.
One thing that can be hard to appreciate is just how isolated Ottawa is and how deeply most of Canada considers it the back of beyond, well out past the sticks. It's 5 hours by road from Toronto even though it's just off the St Lawrence corridor, and farther yet from the main Ontario population centers, and you get there through very sparsely-populated areas.
Moving enough people and equipment to deal with the situation in Ottawa is going to be a huge logistical operation in itself. It would be like moving a couple of thousand or so NYC cops with equipment and Guard backup from NYC to the Thousand Islands.
I've just seen a report that threatens bridge blockades at Windsor from the American side. It just gets better all the time.
No way will Doug Ford release the Ontario Provincial Police to breakup the shitdown strike by the leading lights of Ford Nation (& the Ford family -- his adult daughter is in Ottawa in solidarity with the truckers).
As I said earlier, I think whatever Macron and Hidalgo do will set the tone for the rest of Europe and the UK. If the far-right is confronted by an escalating and firm response that basically seizes their vehicles and arrests large numbers of the insurrectionists, and ends with the protests fizzling out, that’s the path the UK and Europe will follow.
(Macron needs to be clear that he’s not Justin Trudeau. France isn’t going to sit still for these antics. There’s going to be gradual increases in pressure but if the truckers don’t take the hint, he’s going to turn the CRS lose on them and they will make 1968 look like a love in. If he and Hidalgo are clear about that, the truckers will go away and crawl back under the rocks from whence they came) .
The ability of the forces of capital to mobilize this type of worker protest and blockade against the common good and their own health reveals the enormous power preventing resolution to the pandemic and inequality. Truckers have been forced into debt and kept on inhumane schedules for years while bearing the burden of the entrepreneur of the self. Truckers have legitimate grievances yet some mobilize and disrupt commerce to advance the bosses agenda. The grip of the financial oligarchy is tightening and truckers have discovered a way to release it. Their susceptibility to emotional right-wing and fascist themes prevents the growth of their consciousness and dooms them to the indenture they have been fooled into believing will provide the middle class affluence and security lost with the ascendance of late stage capitalism.
The Canadian Trucking Alliance has denounced the convoy. The Teamsters have denounced the convoy. The overwhelming majority of truckers in Canada do not support the convoy.
The convoy has nothing to do with truckers in Canada. Or vaccines: 90% of truckers are already vaccinated.
So go fuck yourself and go goosestepping somewhere else.
What is the reason for the truckers' blockade? They appear to be stimulated by mysterious capitalist agitators who frame the public health experts policies as oppressive rather than workers protesting for better wages and working conditions. Marching in lockstep with the defenders of monopoly and the sanctity of free markets will not solve the problem of mobs motivated by demagoguery.
Hmm, the forces of capital mobilized this protest, which is releasing the grip of the financial oligarchy? Goosedat, you need to re-read before you post. Or get your meds adjusted. Or both.
Democratic liberals are stimulated to hostility with critiques of capitalism. Capital mobilized the protests but it turns out the blockades are a template for opposing oligarchic dictatorship, which Democrats fear.
"Somehow I don't think vaccine mandates are what they really care about."
So it's like the Tea Party who the press/media insisted was all about bailouts or the deficit or something else but definitely not a reaction to a black president.
These protests are worldwide. I agree with the protests, but not the blockades. When Antifa tried to shut down a highway, I was glad when the authorities removed them. However, the protests would be over in a second if the affected Western democracies gave up on the vaccine mandates, the mask mandates, and emergency authorizations that allow them to shut down businesses willy-nilly. The virus is going endemic—time to get on with living our lives in freedom. Yes, I said it - muh freedom.
Acquiescing to the demands of a mob is not how democracy works. You don’t like mandates, there are plenty of candidates for you to support. They don’t happen to have majorities at this time, though, so it’s the governments we actually elected that make the decisions.
What mandates?
If you don't want to participate, stay home.
Here is a link from the BBC documenting the protests happening in Western democracies where the elites refuse to give up their authoritarian power.https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60359061
‘Authoritarian power’ is what Putin and Xi Jinping exercise. What we have in the US, Canada and Western Europe is called ‘representative democracy’.
And--it is no more:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/12/canada-ottawa-protest-police-us-border-bridge
So wait, why was the bridge being blocked if all that had to happen was police roll up all lights and sirens?
Basically, sort of. If I understand what I’ve been reading (and if my reading between the lines is right), it was a combination of things. There was the injunction and the declaration of a state of emergency which created something that could be described as a “new” situation.
More tactically, the police received massive reinforcements including a huge number to tow trucks. Unlike the position of the occupiers in the towns, the people on the bridge were physically isolated and extremely vulnerable. The cops could very easily roll right over the people blockading the bridge with no risk of injury to innocent people.
Reading between the lines: apparently the last ditch effort was to form a line of little kids across the bridge to be used as human shields. My impression is that the cops were clear that they were going to take the kids to child service and arrest the parents for child endangering. And then they were going through the blockade like Sherman through Georgia. At which, point the blockaders essentially folded and went home.
All of this could and should have been done on the first day.
Key point from the Gurney dispatch Justin linked to: “It was obviously a massive intelligence and planning failure” (on the part of the authorities). Same was true of the Capitol attack - the authorities prepared for skirmishes between rival protests, which never occurred.
Ah, cld linked to it first …
Agreed, but I also think this failure has additional parents. There seems to have been more coordination within a small group of people "known to the authorities" (as we could say) and also more money behind them than has been the case before, so likely some non-Canadian input and influence in the planning. This is new and probably unanticipated, producing a situation like January 6 in being fronted by a chaotic loosey-goosey public face as cover for a smaller disciplined group with definite targets in mind. And to that end, publicity and social-media presence were very effective in recruiting the larger numbers on the way. Also likely new and apparently not picked up on, or if it was, its urgency wasn't felt by people in a position to prepare for the group.
I'd be willing to bet, though, that the police chief there was seriously worried about what could happen and pressed the mayor to take some of the pre-emptive steps they've taken in other cities, but that the mayor didn't want anything like that to happen-- he's been pitching Ottawa as a welcoming town for most of his career, plus he might not have wanted to pay overtime for setting up checkpoints. Others don't see it that way, but that's my guess.
Also the conservative politicians there have been almost as dithering and feckless as ours and haven't been willing to recognize this protest for what it is. They're at loose ends now because they blew the last election so badly and can't figure out whether they're traditional conservatives or culture warrior/populist conservatives. So they don't want to get on the wrong side of people whose ideological standing is so close to their own, again just like so many of ours. Doug Ford was talking against the "occupation" of Ottawa but the bridge blockade is what forced his hand-- he's a Conservative but not the nihilist at heart kind.
Looks like this could still take quite a while to sort out, I hope without significant violence.