Convoy!
Back in the 1970s, truckers were the avatars of freedom and the personification of popular resistance against petty, unreasoning, power-mad authority. The spirit was expressed in the film Convoy:
and the song of the same title.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, we are having another 70s flashback. An immense, well, convoy of truckers from across Canada has swarmed the country’s capital of Ottawa. The immediate cause of their protest is the government’s mandating of vaccines for all truckers entering Canada. But really the trucks are carrying the accumulated discontents of many with all policies COVID, which are especially onerous in Canada. (Recall my Anglosphere post of some months back: Canada has been competing with Australia and New Zealand for the Commonwealth COVID Fascism Cup, the UK having recently dropped out of the competition.)
The Canadian government, and its obnoxious premier Justin Trudeau in particular, are absolutely losing their shit over this. Trudeau has repeatedly slandered the protesters in a way that he never would have dreamed with, say, BLM protesters even though the latter did commit violence and destruction on Canadian streets and the truckers have been firm but peaceful and polite.
Some Trudeau tweets:
Trudeau has also said that the protesters are a “small fringe minority” with “unacceptable views” and that “what we are hearing from some people associated with this convoy is completely unacceptable.”
Hey, boy–and I do mean boy–if it’s such a small fringe, how come you are so scared of it? So scared that you were whisked to an “undisclosed location.” (Hey, I thought that was Dick Cheney’s job!) So scared that you claimed that you had to go into isolation because you’d been exposed to COVID, therefore conveniently preventing you from addressing the protests publicly (where, no doubt, you would be booed heartily).
That’s why it’s more than hilariously ironic that you call on people to “be courageous,” pantywaist that you are. Yeltsin on a tank, you ain’t. You are a complete and utter wuss who is apparently so lacking in confidence in your ability to persuade and so devoid of testicular fortitude that you run away and slander.
Those truckers are dynamite!
And the irony of your injunction to “speak out” is also too much. Yeah, be brave, people! Speak out! Except about any government policy that one doesn’t like, such as vaccine mandates. Then, if you do speak out, you are expressing “unacceptable views” and you must shut up or be repressed.
So Trudeau’s Canada again imitates Holy Grail:
“Will you shut up!?!?” Justin couldn’t have said it better himself.
Also note the typical statist MO here. Trudeau and his creatures in the government and media (including the US media) are focusing obsessively on extremely isolated incidents of allegedly hateful statements and symbols (e.g., a Confederate flag) said or displayed by the truckers, and using this to tar the entire movement. This is a typical, and typically dishonest tactic. Also, given the prominence given to these episodes in government propaganda, do not discount–at all–the possibility that some of them are government created. Literal false flags, as it were.
Justin Trudeau is a loathsome little twat who wet himself with excitement about COVID presenting an opportunity to “reset” the entire world economy and society:
The only thing the Davos crowd probably found objectionable to Trudeau’s remarks is that he said them so openly, lest they bring unwanted attention to their grand scheme.
Trudeau is of a type and there are many like him in power around the world. He particularly reminds me of California governor Gavin Newsom. In this I am not alone. A friend said that Trudeau and Newsom were created in the same lab. To which I added: “Yes. By Klaus Schwab.”
There is talk of a similar convoy in the United States. I hope so. To put our not-so-fearless “leaders” on the spot. To force them to make plain their utter hypocrisy: the will no doubt scream “extremists” and “coup” even though the protests will be peaceful, in stark contrast to their endorsement of violent and destructive protests in 2020.
And to force them to be accountable for two years of disastrous COVID policies. Vaccine mandates are the straw that broke the camel’s back, but the grievances go far deeper than that, and stretch back for two whole years.
There are some who believe that the official COVID narrative, and the policies that narrative justified, are crumbling. Some countries, notably Denmark, have thrown in the towel and abandoned almost all restrictions, and have effectively stated that vaccines are ineffective. The UK has gone almost as far.
I am not so sanguine that this will spread. Too many governments are too invested in the narrative, and too intoxicated by the power that they have seized under the guise of public health to give it up willingly. Note that Trudeau has doubled down despite being confronted with the most robust protests in the world. France and Germany and other countries have been equally truculent in dealing with their disgruntled citizens.
But although pressure like the convoy in Canada may not be sufficient to end the tyranny, it is necessary. So by all means, let the example spread, to the US to the world. And do your part. Take L’il Justin’s advice! Speak out. Oppose the repression. Engage in peaceful civil disobedience when you can. Support those who are subject to attack for speaking out. By doing so, we might, just might, restore freedom and civil society, and topple tyrants.
I learned recently that there is a common phrase in sociology “Getting to Denmark”, as an aspirational target in terms of human and societal development. I’m not surprised to see the Danes leading the way again! The anglophone world’s resistance to getting back to normal is absolutely worthy of protest!
That said, I need to fact-check the Prof here: “Some countries, notably Denmark, … have effectively stated that vaccines are ineffective”.
This is at odds with:
• The Danish Royal Academy of Sciences says: “With Omicron not being a severe disease for the vaccinated, we believe it is reasonable to lift restrictions”
• Denmark’s public health and research institution: “We may end up having to vaccinate risk groups ahead of the autumn to prevent severe cases”
Sounds more like they believe that vaccines are quite effective.
Comment by HibernoFrog — February 1, 2022 @ 2:54 am
“An immense, well, convoy of truckers …” Tim Worstall noticed a report in The Times: “There were chaotic scenes over the weekend as scores of articulated lorries began to roll in on Friday …”
There you are, it’s only “scores”. Not to worry.
Comment by dearieme — February 1, 2022 @ 7:15 am
Danes: have they rebutted the analysts who argue otherwise or have they just ignored them? My money in on the latter – after all it’s how The Science has behaved for two years now.
Comment by dearieme — February 1, 2022 @ 7:18 am
@Dearieme: To be honest, if your protest isn’t at least a little bit chaotic, you’re doing it wrong 🙂
Comment by HibernoFrog — February 1, 2022 @ 8:14 am
Speaking up for we Aussies: our truckies tried to stage just such a protest about six months ago, during our lockdowns when the equally-vile f*ckwits in charge here tried to impose a vaccine mandate on them.
As you so aptly described, the government here lost its shit as well, and did EVERYTHING they could – including disrupting the wattsapp, telegram and other communications channels and imposing media blackouts – to stop the truckies from coordinating their actions.
However we now have a convoy in sympathy with the Canucks moving to our capital city as well. They haven’t been able to stop that.
Truly I have never been so disgusted with western governments. The mask really has come off: they aren’t elected leaders, they are simply the ‘capos’ of our shiny new concentration camps, following the orders of their Davos masters, who we get to choose from lists ‘approved’ by just those masters every few years.
Beyond belief that people keep voting for this garbage.
Anyway – allez les Canucks!
Comment by Ex-Global Super-Regulator on Lunch Break — February 1, 2022 @ 9:32 am
@dearieme. Tim fell for the propaganda that is in the mainstream media. FFS. The entire establishment is hell-bent on minimizing this.
Comment by cpirrong — February 1, 2022 @ 10:44 am
@HibernoFrog. I said “effectively stated.” Quite deliberately. Actions speak far louder than official pronouncements. To paraphrase Orwell, they are objectively vax skeptics.
Comment by cpirrong — February 1, 2022 @ 10:45 am
Hiberno: oh yes, vaccines are very effective. Effectively killing those who submitted.
Comment by Tatyana — February 1, 2022 @ 12:40 pm
Frankly, we as a nation, traditionally describing ourselves as FREE should be ashamed – that convoys did not originated on our territory.
Having said that, a few interesting links
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/feds-parade-check-coordinated-group-masked-men-matching-head-gear-conroe-trump-rally/
https://reclaimthenet.org/ottawa-gofundme-freedom-convoy-lawsuit-seize-request/
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/canada-lifts-nonessential-foreign-travel-advisory-ontario-drop-covid
Comment by T — February 1, 2022 @ 12:54 pm
Sorry, clicked enter too soon.
I know I’m dating myself, but the words “trackers block roads” and “trackers put pressure on socialist government” immediately remind me not of a movie but something real: Chile.
And how soviet propaganda machine started generating confusing messages about till-then-proletarian, blue-collar trackers suddenly in the tone reserved for “kulaks, their rabid-dog defenders and capitalist enemy”.
In lieu of which, i think it’s time to appropriate this slogan (after all, they stole it first) for our own needs:
https://creakypavillion.wordpress.com/2022/01/30/el-pueblo-unido-jamas-sera-vencido/
And the picture.
Comment by Tatyana — February 1, 2022 @ 1:06 pm
Do the police of Canada want to be identified similarly as German SS enforcers??
Comment by Chris Hafferty — February 1, 2022 @ 5:26 pm
I love how you call the government fascist and the truckers freedom loving when the truckers are flying nazi and confederate flags. Fucking insult to American history while claiming to love freedom. It’s a good thing I’m hungry because this irony is so palpable I could eat it for dinner.
Comment by R — February 1, 2022 @ 9:40 pm
“Worldwide Bayesian Causal Impact Analysis of Vaccine Administration on Deaths and Cases Associated with COVID-19: A BigData Analysis of 145 Countries”
The analysis shows that in 145 countries, deployment of the mRNA inoculation was positively correlated with the number of Covid cases per million and total deaths per million, with significant increases over and above the Covid cases and deaths that would have occurred had nothing been done.
Comment by Pat Frank — February 2, 2022 @ 12:38 am
@Pat: Link doesn’t work, though it is easily Google-able. Said search led me here: https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/scientific-evidence-shows-covid-19-vaccination-reduces-risk-infection-mortality-analysis-cases-deaths-from-145-countries-methodologically-flawed-steve-kirsch/
QUOTE:
Flawed reasoning: The claim is based on an ecological study that predicted current numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths if there had been no vaccines, based on data from the period when vaccines weren’t available. It then compared these numbers to the actual numbers of cases and deaths in the post-vaccine period, and found the actual numbers to be higher. Based on this, it concluded that COVID-19 vaccines increased cases and deaths. But this analysis failed to account for other variables that also directly affect cases and COVID-19 mortality (confounding factors), such as virus variants with increased transmissibility and healthcare capacity during the pandemic.
UNQUOTE.
So do I interpret correctly that this study effectively claims that there were fewer Covid deaths when we had lockdowns and restrictions then there are now, when most sensible parts of the world have already got back to mostly normal? Pretty weak sauce…
@Prof: I don’t think that’s fair. The entire claim around vaccine-mandates is that they allow a country to abolish Covid restrictions, and since the Dutch waited until after they had achieved a 90+% vaccination rate before doing so, I don’t see any way to interpret this as any kind of indication that they believe vaccines were ineffective. In fact, this is also exactly the behaviour you would expect if they did believe it worked. And if we’re really looking at their actions, they still require vaccination (or negative test) to enter the country.
@Super-regulator: Isn’t shutting down Whatsapp the kind of thing crackpot dictatorships do? WTF is going on over there…
Comment by HibernoFrog — February 2, 2022 @ 9:16 am
Suppose most politicians in the advanced countries now understand that their policies have been panic-stricken and deadly. How do the reverse them while still trying to save their political careers? Two manoeuvres stand out. They say we can reverse course because (i) Omicron, and/or (ii) widespread vaccination.
The reversal of course provides no information at all about their genuine beliefs except for the imperatives of saving face and escaping blame.
Comment by dearieme — February 2, 2022 @ 11:59 am
I have been ranting about the idiocy of the West for two years now. I see that there are more and more “résistants de la dernière heure” about. You’re welcome.
Speaking of idiots, I see that Xi (not a covid variant) still thinks he can crush the virus his country invented and released to the world.
The greed of Pfizer is something to behold. While acknowledging that children are not at risk from covid and that the jab does not protect against infection or infecting third parties (don’t kill granny!) they still want to put an experimental drug into the arms of babes in arms. Greed and hypocrisy.
Comment by philip — February 2, 2022 @ 2:17 pm
@12 HF, sorry about the broken link. I’d tested it, and it seemed OK.
In any case, your criticizing source (Mr. Critic) is not entirely credible. For example, he writes: “Beattie’s analysis is fundamentally flawed because he failed to account for other variables that also directly affect cases and deaths (confounding factors), such as the spread of virus variants with increased transmissibility like Delta, public health measures that were applied at different times, and healthcare capacity.”
Were multiple unknown confounding factors interfering, they’d produce a variety of effects. Multiple confounders can operate in different directions, and are not identically present in all instances.
With many instances (145 countries), one expects a spread of outcomes from non-uniformly distributed confounding factors; some results go one way some the other. But Beattie’s results do not show that. They show a uniformity of outcome that is inconsistent with the varying outcomes expected if impacts of different suites of confounding factors were hidden in the data.
Then he writes that, “Beattie also didn’t account for the fact that countries in general have a mixture of unvaccinated and vaccinated people.”
Here’s what Beattie says about that in his paper: “[T]he publicly available data for COVID-19 related cases and death does a poor job at differentiating between vaccinated and non-vaccinated individuals … Unfortunately, much of the data surrounding this variable is highly politicized at this moment in time and is therefore difficult to obtain in large enough quantities in an unbiased fashion.”
Mr. Critic was, first, wrong that Beattie had not considered the problem and, second, criticized Beattie for not using politicized and unreliable data.
The marked dominance of unreliable politicized data makes Mr. Critic’s entire subsequent case/death rates of vaxxed/unvaxxed argument careless and artifactual.
It appears therefore that Mr. Critic is a bit of Mr. Hand-waving.
On a related subject, I can make a very credible case that more people have died from the mRNA shot than have died from Covid alone.
Comment by Pat Frank — February 2, 2022 @ 3:05 pm
@14, Philip — mass murder, more like, and crimes against humanity.
Comment by Pat Frank — February 2, 2022 @ 3:07 pm
“résistants de la dernière heure”: I have a bookmark folder called “Bedwetters in retreat”. It’s growing at a fair lick.
Comment by dearieme — February 2, 2022 @ 4:51 pm
Don’t leave out White Line Fever with Jan-Michael Vincent.
Comment by Joel — February 3, 2022 @ 6:11 am
@R. Full of shit much? You are regurgitating the fascist government’s propaganda and slandering the truckers.
Comment by cpirrong — February 3, 2022 @ 12:45 pm
“truckers are flying nazi and confederate flags”: that’s to let you identify the truck being driven by an FBI agent or his Canadian equivalent.
Comment by dearieme — February 3, 2022 @ 4:52 pm
Dearie @ #22: bingo
Comment by Tatyana — February 3, 2022 @ 8:48 pm
@Prof, heads up, the Turkish Lira may very soon go down the gurgler, taking the Turkish economy (and hopefully the vile Erdo) with it. Situation now appears to be critical.
Comment by Ex-Global Super-Regulator on Lunch Break — February 4, 2022 @ 3:48 am
I’m not generally one to subscribe to the notion (popular here) that governments are using Covid restrictions to attack hard-won freedoms… but when the nanny-states of Europe are dismantling restrictions and Canada isn’t, you gotta wonder what Trudeau is doing… Also, I Google Image searched “canadian trucker protest” and did not see a single Nazi flag. Saw lots of supporters standing around the trucks though! In fact, it looks like the nicest protest ever – with 100% certainty if this protest were in France, there’d be stuff on fire by now.
@Dearieme: Obviously I can’t say you’re wrong about the course-reversal, but I think it’s overly cynical – After all, they did promise exactly that course in advance.
@Pat: OK, you make a reasonable case that neither side can actually say much definitively… So just like climate change, that leaves the layperson like me (well, at least on these subjects) not knowing what or who to believe. No wonder it’s become so politicised… Anyway, with restrictions coming down everywhere (except the anglophone world, apparently), hopefully this will all be moot soon…
Comment by HibernoFrog — February 4, 2022 @ 4:01 am
@pat: I can make a very credible case that more people have died from the mRNA shot than have died from Covid alone
I feel another self-sponsored paper coming on (maybe you could crowdfund one from your legion of supporters here?). I’d avoid the open source route this time though and try a proper journal instead; you wouldn’t want the Francess Thomas’s of the world giving us the benefit of their ‘insight’ on those public comments pages. Or maybe you would – any publicity is publicity, after all.
@Hiberno – unsurprisingly, I don’t buy this power grab nonsense either. Why would the Deep State even need to do this? Serves no extra purpose IMO.
Comment by David Mercer — February 4, 2022 @ 6:37 am
@dearie me, Pat Frank
The Diamond Princess was not just a petri dish, it was a pretty high class observational study.
Get a boatload of coffin dodgers with a young and healthy crew (the control), confine them and ventilate the cabins with unfiltered air and see what happens.
Mystery disease, not many dead, none in the control group.
End of panic. (Not)
Comment by philip — February 4, 2022 @ 7:26 am
@philip: that was my thought at the time. The panic of the Chinese government had made me wonder whether this really was going to be a disastrous problem: not the Black Death, of course, but nonetheless potentially far deadlier than a bad flu season. The Diamond Princess revealed that it wasn’t a disaster – the crew were a lovely demonstration of the “healthy worker effect” and the poor old souls who perished were few, all considered. The one useful lesson that it didn’t teach me was the invulnerability of healthy infants and children – but I assume that might have been clear from the data from Lombardy?
Why then did the Powers That Be lose their heads? I suspect that it was because their electorates lost theirs. Anyway, that did turn it into a disaster after all, and needlessly.
We can hardly machine-gun all the electorates but a cull among the Powers That Be would be desirable. I’d particularly take aim at all the crooks, cheats, and cowards who betrayed science and medicine.
Comment by dearieme — February 4, 2022 @ 10:23 am
@26 David — thank-you for yet another comic pretense. In this crazy world, it’s nice that some things remain constant.
Bob Dylan’s Idiot Wind comes to mind. Blowing every time you move your teeth.
Comment by Pat Frank — February 4, 2022 @ 11:05 am
@Ex-Global Super-Regulator on Lunch Break–I know they’ve been trying to levitate it through various means, but this couldn’t go on forever. What leads you to believe that the moment is nigh?
Comment by cpirrong — February 4, 2022 @ 1:18 pm
@dearieme–I think it was a classic positive feedback loop. (Ironically, these usually seem to have very negative effects.). The initial panic by the populace, fed by the media and the Chinese actions, spooked governments into taking draconian measures. But these measures, and the rhetoric used to justify them, only stoked the public’s fears. Wash, rinse, repeat. Then there was a lock-in effect (no pun intended). Once committed to these measures and the rhetoric to support them, governments/bureaucrats were never going to admit error and relent. So they had to keep up the scare.
But I would not discount, at all, the reality that some governments and some in government found this to be a gift from God. Trudeau is only the most public in his acknowledgement. “Hey, this is the opportunity to reset everything.” He just said the quiet part aloud. Many others around the world agreed.
I second your sentiments re crooks, cheats and cowards. Along those lines, the execrable Neil Ferguson came out and also said the quiet part out loud. In a nutshell, he said that China’s draconian actions were a godsend because they showed (despite his previous doubts) that they could do the same in Europe. We know most “public health” people are commies–that’s not hyperbole–and they leapt at the chance to let their control freak flags fly.
There is also the mystery of the Chinese response. The facial explanation is that they panicked. But perhaps they were doing that for the specific purpose of getting the rest of the world to panic. For example, were the videos, now known to be staged, of people dying in China’s streets aimed at China, or at the West, Japan, etc.?
Comment by cpirrong — February 4, 2022 @ 1:26 pm
@25 HF — the reasonable case is that the mRNA shots increase the incidence of viral illness.
The result is not entirely surprising considering the mRNA shots evidently injure the immune system. People may be made more vulnerable to infection.
Comment by Pat Frank — February 4, 2022 @ 2:28 pm
@Prof:
Thanks to the mysteries of Youtube’s algorithms, I’ve discovered a channel called Joe Blogs. He has been talking about Turkey and also China recently, and is warning that the situation is now critical. I won’t post a link here as they tend to cause the system to spazz out, so have a search for his channel.
Don’t know if he’s correct but I’m warming up the popcorn just in case.
Comment by Ex-Global Super-Regulator on Lunch Break — February 6, 2022 @ 12:58 pm
Dearie @#22: and now we have proof
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/update-man-rammed-car-winnipeg-freedom-convoy-protesters-antifa-activist/
Comment by Tatyana — February 7, 2022 @ 9:10 am