This moronic and disgusting "freedom" convoy and protest causes me to think about the motivations of its participants. Who are these people and what exactly are they protesting? Obviously they're protesting masks, lockdowns and vaccine mandates. But why? As for the "who" in the question; some of them are truckers. Others appear to own pickup trucks and SUVs. Other participants joined the convoy in cars. But that doesn't tell us much. Some sources say that 90% of Canadian truckers are vaccinated. One commenter at Canadian Cynic says he has a fully-vaccinated relative who is an enthusiastic participant in the convoy:
I have a friend and his son trapped on the outskirts of Ottawa for the past 3 days. Many people tried to talk him out of his little road trip, but he wouldn't listen. He's vaccinated 3x, but he's very anti-government. It's the way he was brought up. He's there fighting for freedoms, not against a vaccine.He's trying to leave because food and fuel are short, but the tractors are parked so close together he can't move. In trying to get help, he's being called a traitor for leaving. Fact is he spent a lot of money getting there with the promise once he got to Ottawa he'd receive reimbursement. As of 2 days ago, he can't reach any of the leadership. It's as if he's been soft blocked on the app they used. There's 3 other convoys in the same predicament, leaders are giving interviews from "undisclosed locations" because EVERYONE is looking for them.The terrific thing is that word's gone through the entire convoy that the RCMP and City of Ottawa are attempting to seize those donated funds, or at least stop them from being withdrawn.This is _exactly_ what I warned about, to all the people going. I even attended the rally here last Saturday and it was a shit show. It wasn't a protest. It was a mob of asshats looking to start trouble.I asked one person there what he thought about all the racist images coming in, and he said "that's not here in Edmonton" and I pointed to one in the crowd. Instead of calling it down, he got aggressive and called me a traitor.He got even more upset when I said if I'm the problem calling out racism in his movement, he was comfortable with the imagery.As we speak, my friend is walking up the road to ask RCMP for assistance with getting out of the truck line and coming home. He feels like an ass, and he feels like he was duped. He's also not the only one there feeling the same.
The organizers of this convoy say that they are protesting federal vaccine mandates for Canadian truckers who cross the Canada-USA border. This is an intolerable violation of their bodily sovereignty. Of course, a Canadian trucker entering the USA is required by US law to be vaccinated so the issue seems somewhat contrived. I went over to the "freedom convoy" website and at the homepage [I'll not be linking to it] they are also complaining about the economic disruptions of lockdowns, the destruction of homes, and the mistreatment of people and the denial to people of "the fundamental necessities to survive." I'll go through these in turn:
- The lockdowns that have all been implemented by provincial governments. So it's unclear why they're going to the federal legislature to complain about them. It's true (and very unfortunate) that many small businesses (restaurants and retail establishments mainly) have been forced to close because of the disruptions caused by the lockdowns. If I had been the king of Canada at the start of this crisis I would have pursued a policy of "Zero Covid." There would have been a massive national lockdown and a closing of the borders and a genuine attempt to discover and isolate every infected individual and anyone associated with them. There would have been massive subsidies for everyone temporarily out of work and the banks would have been forced to suspend all loans and mortages for the duration. (That is; to pretend that time had stopped. Not to allow interest payments to accumulate to be paid off later.) Canada didn't do that. We made a half-assed attempt at the beginning of the crisis. We called it "flattening the curve." But viruses don't work that way. Long story short: Canada's federal government failed to contain the virus and we have lurched from one lockdown to another. But those lockdowns have all been provincial affairs and the dismal failure of mainly conservative premiers has allowed the pandemic to rage.
- I have no idea what they're babbling about with the destruction of homes and I don't care to think any further about it.
- Who are these people being mistreated? How are they being mistreated? Perhaps they're again referring to the lockdowns. Again though, the lockdowns have all been provincial affairs which means that their ire against Trudeau is misplaced.
- Denying people of "the fundamental necessities needed to survive" is a bit of hyperbole. It might have something to do with the supply-chain problems that resulted from a globalized economy suffering pandemic lockdowns in various countries and millions of workers getting sick or isolating. This has caused some dishonest people to post pictures of empty supermarket shelves claiming that this is somehow Trudeau's fault.
Other writers provide some background to the "freedom convoy" organizers that puts them in an unfavourable light. They're far-right extremists. Long-term grifters. White nationalists. Most of them are what's known as "conservative"; from worshippers of Donald Trump to supporters of the racist People's Party of Canada.
Essentially these are stupid people. Deluded assholes who think that they're very intelligent. People who spend their hours reading shit that turns their brains to shit. Incoherent stammering morons. Seflish, narcissistic, entitled individuals.
Everything they believe about the pandemic is the opposite of reality. They denied the virus's existence. Then they denied its danger. They invented all sorts of stupid theories about masks for the sole reason that they find wearing them to be an inconvenience. They hate the lockdowns because they also inconvenience them. They start everything from the premise that the virus is fake. That everything is fake. From there, a lockdown is going to look like nothing more than a whimsy from a power-mad, authoritarian government. Even when they get COVID it doesn't affect the rest of their worldview. Somehow it's still about "freedom." It's still about resistance to the globalist "Great Reset." (How getting people to wear masks, forcing restaurants and other small businesses to shut-down and vaccinating people against a real virus is supposed to increase the power of the globalist satanic pedophile ring that rules over us isn't ever coherently explained.)
Vaccines are the match to this oil-soaked rag. While I was personally concerned about the safety of vaccines that hadn't had years of human trials, I operated from the premise that the pandemic was real and that COVID was a very nasty way to be sick and a very nasty way to die. While I distrust the pharmaceutical companies it is not because I believe they're trying to insert microchips into us. I believe that they are insanely greedy and that they put profits over human well being. I distrust neo-liberal governments but I simultaneously believe that libraries, public health insurance, much of my education, etc., were provided for me as a result of historical struggles by ordinary people to force governments to provide these services. The COVID-deniers are often long-term anti-vaxxers. The anti-vaccine movement is a big tent housing eco-hippies-organic-gluten-free-greenies and right-wing libertarian conspiracy theorists as well as socially conservative religious nutbars. They're often the victims of grifters.
Forcing people to get vaccines when they don't think the virus is real or dangerous upsets them. To make a long-story short, these people just don't like being told what to do. They're stupid (or at least believe in stupid things). Think of them as overgrown, selfish children. Anyway, I'm tired of writing about them.
8 comments:
What do they want? If you look at the organizers, where some of the money has come from, these "truckers" are just the gun. Ottawa has been criticized for not bringing down the hammer immediately on these fucks. Well, there are a few reasons for this:
This is a new beast to Canada. Ottawa began treating them as what they claimed they were - protesters demanding free speech. They weren't ready for this, but now Toronto and QC are better prepared, stopping the worst before it can plant itself as it did here (in Ottawa).
The policing forces, working with security forces realized quickly there are agents that have nothing to do with mask and vax mandates behind this occupation, and to hammer the truckers would not solve the problem, may even aggravate it. As with any crime, we may know who the culprit is but we still need solid proof to prosecute, or they'll walk and feel empowered. We also need to know if anyone was behind the front man.
Sadly, Ottawa and its citizens are paying a high price for this learning experience and information gathering.
The sad upside is that these fucks have had 10 days of free speech and shown the world what they do with such freedom: harass citizens, disrupt lives, endanger health, close down businesses, threaten to rape health care workers, set up bouncy castles, stock pile fuel, raid soup kitchens meant for the homeless, beat up street people...
They had pretty much free rein and we saw them in all their naked horrid being. They have no logical, cohesive demands, they stomp on everyone else's freedoms and rights for their inconsistent, ridiculous demands, they try to achieve their childish, poorly thought out demands through bullying, threats, and worse. They are a mindless, angry bunch easily lead to some bullshit cause by the real dangerous ones behind the occupation, those bent on pushing the violent lawlessness like we saw in the States Jan. 6.
Undermine our law and order so they can move in with their own brand, keep the stupid riled up and use them whenever they want to create chaos.
Why didn't the cops come down on this bunch like they did on First Nations, BLM? Because Those lawful protesters were actual protesters who wouldn't react with looting, vandalism, and murder. These pricks will because they aren't protesters and are driven by mindless rage, rage at anything in their paths. Unfair, sure. But it's something like a hostage situation here and the cops need to get the fuckers out with as little violence to citizens as possible and take the opportunity to collect valuable information not only to arrest the people behind the occupation, but flag them against future actions - which are definitely going to happen.
I hate these bastards. Every moment of every day I fight back the rage I feel and need to remind myself that that's what they do: run on rage. We are better than that, and we need to remain that way.
There is no consistent message or demand with these terrorists because they are being played by the ones who just want chaos and violence so they can undermine our legitimate democratic system.
Anyway, thanks for posting TWAP and thanks for still being there, a voice of reason.
900ft
Knock them all you wish, but they exposed the weakness of the Canadian state far more effectively than any progressive protest in the last 25 years at least.
900ft Jesus;
I also think that the Ottawa cops, being bullies and louts themselves, ... upholders of the same sort of selfish individualism and childishness as these protesters, and even more prone to resort to violence, ... agree with their moronic stance.
But aside from that your denunciation of them aligns with my feelings. They want to hang Trudeau for lockdowns imposed by provincial governments. They wail about needing to get vaccinated to return from the USA, ignoring that by US law they need to get vaccinated to ENTER the USA.
They're too fucking stupid and deluded to grasp that the pandemic is real.
Anonymous,
If anything, COVID-19 has exposed the incapacities of the Canadian state. But with regards to the protesters, as I said to 900ft J above, probably the majority of the Ottawa police are soul-mates with these stupid clods. Furthermore, these protesters haven't really been confronted at all during this crisis because their stupid whining that the government is doing too much to fight the pandemic helps our assorted provincial and federal governments to hide the fact that their efforts have been half-assed.
Right-wingers never seem to clue in that their delusional conspiracy theories always reinforce power, which is why the capitalist oligarchy fears the left more than it does the right. (And by "fear" I obviously don't mean anything like a reluctance to bash our heads in. I mean that the oligarchy is fine with right-wingers hating vaccines and Muslims but is terrified of left-wingers calling for economic democracy and social justice and getting heard.)
No one is scared of the left these days. To busy tearing down statues and dressing up their kids as ‘gender queer’ or whatever to actual challenge the current economic system in any meaningful way.
Still this protest is a hoot. I mean Progressives in Ottawa are literally fearful to come out of their homes.
I guess all their anti-police rhetoric came back to bite them in the ass. Good times.
Anonymous,
I get it now. You're a shit-head.
I'll try one more time to explain it but given the fact that you're a monstrosity; the product of dark magicks that made you the cursed outcome of a session of anal sex - a satanic combination of feces, semen and blood that can somehow cry and talk, - I don't have much in the way of hope that you'll be able to comprehend.
You'll notice, Shit Head (your parents were quite literal in naming you) that I didn't say that the police aren't afraid to bash-in left-wing skulls. They're not afraid of us physically.
I said that the oligarchy is terrified of our ideas catching on among the wider populace. Because that would produce difficulties for their long-term project of society-destroying theft and abuse and sleaze.
Now, perhaps you're a wealthy person yourself, and therefore a beneficiary of said theft, abuse and sleaze. But given the fact that you're trolling a blog I'm more convinced that you're a fedora-wearing shlub with delusions of intelligence.
"Anti-police rhetoric." You moral imbecile. The murderous racism and the cowardly bullying of North American police has been well documented. Of course, you constantly fantasize about wrapping your shitty lips around the barrels of their guns and debasing yourself until they blow your shitty brains out, because their racism and bullying turns you on.
I do know that COVID-19 is one of the major causes of death for North American cops, because, as I said, these stupid lunk-heads believe in the same stupid shit as these rioters, so they don't get vaccinated or behave like sensible adults. And they suffer the inevitable consequences and it looks good on them.
Now know this Shit Head. Your efforts are unwanted here. Subsequent comments from you will be deleted.
"I also think that the Ottawa cops, being bullies and louts themselves, ... upholders of the same sort of selfish individualism and childishness as these protesters, and even more prone to resort to violence, ... agree with their moronic stance."
I agree and the past few weeks have exposed some of that. I hope the EA leads to more scrutiny. My experiences with Ottawa and area cops have shown me they are largely (I met a few decent ones) lazy and quite corrupt.
My daughter witnessed a brutal rape years back and since she was a minor, I was at her side for the crazy "interviews" the cops put her through. I finally had to bring in a victim's advocate to be at every meeting. (the rape was not done by a cop. The threats and pressure put on my daughter were so bizarre I'd have trouble believing them had I not been there).
She didn't bend to their pressure which set of years of harassment any time her name would show up even for such things as being in the vicinity of an accident.
It only ended when we pushed back hard enough for an investigation - the credit is nearly all hers, though, she is a tough little thing with a powerful sense of justice - and she was given an official written apology listing the names of two cops.
Mostly over the years I've seen a fuck you attitude from them, can't be bothered with your problem, and always that edge in their tone and approach that you better not challenge them.
900 ft Jesus,
Yeah. That's quite an accurate portrait you've painted. The whole service should be overhauled.
Post a Comment