OTTAWA — Almost two-thirds of Canadians oppose the Ottawa protest against COVID-19 measures, with more than four in 10 saying they strongly consider the demonstration a selfish display, a new poll suggests.
But almost 30 per cent of Canadians surveyed by Leger disagreed with that characterization of the demonstration against COVID-19 measures that has seen hundreds of large trucks create gridlock and incessant noise in the national capital.
Ont. reports 42 more virus-related deaths; Number of COVID patients in hospital now 2,254
Ontario is reporting another 42 virus-related deaths as the province continues to see a steady decrease in the number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals week-over-week.
Provincial health officials say there are now 2,254 patients in hospital with COVID-19, down from 3,091 just one week ago. The number of patients with the virus receiving treatment in intensive care units has also dropped to 474, nearly 100 fewer than the number reported last Tuesday.
474 people are in ICU with #COVID19. 82% of patients admitted to the ICU were admitted for COVID-19 and 18% were admitted for other reasons but have tested positive for COVID-19.
There are 2,092 new cases of COVID-19.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) February 8, 2022
Finally ready to travel abroad? Returning home can get complicated
Many Canadians were forced to shelve their upcoming vacations when the pandemic first hit.
Two years later, as March break approaches, and with COVID-19 restrictions lifting, a number of people are anxious to resurrect those long-awaited travel plans.
Canadian-based travel agency Flight Centre said bookings for trips departing from Canadian airports in March have spiked by more than 700 per cent compared to bookings the same time last year.
The trucker convoy protest against COVID-19 measures that has brought Canada’s national capital to a standstill for the past 11 days is garnering growing interest across the border in the United States.
… Bruce Heyman, a former U.S. ambassador to Canada under Barack Obama, said it was “wholly inappropriate” for U.S. senators, governors and states’ attorneys general to suggest support of the trucker movement and interfere with Canada’s domestic affairs.
“It’s so incredibly scary and disappointing,” he told Global News in an interview from Chicago.
New Zealand protesters block streets outside parliament
WELLINGTON, Feb 8 (Reuters) – Hundreds of people protesting vaccine mandates and pandemic restrictions blocked streets outside New Zealand’s parliament on Tuesday with trucks and campervans, inspired by similar demonstrations in Canada.
The “convoy for freedom” protesters arrived from all corners of New Zealand and gathered outside the parliament building in the capital Wellington, called the Beehive, ahead of the first speech for the year by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
Belgium convoy for freedom getting underway as the Canadian method spreads worldwide.#FreedomConvoy2022 pic.twitter.com/61Kx9d0E1E
— WorldWideNews24 (XII) (@News24Wide) February 8, 2022
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the ongoing anti-vaccine mandate protest in Ottawa is “trying to blockade our economy, our democracy and our fellow citizens’ daily lives.”
He says, “It has to stop.”
Trudeau appeared in the House of Commons Monday evening to take part in an emergency debate on the protest in Ottawa, which is now in its second week.
Supporters of the trucker convoy have delayed traffic at the Ambassador Bridge, Canada’s busiest border crossing.
Police in Windsor, Ont. say the exit from the Ambassador Bridge onto Huron Church Road is “temporarily interrupted” in both directions due to the presence of protesters. Police are advising drivers to avoid the area or find alternate route, if possible.
The Ambassador Bridge that connects Ontario and Michigan was shut down by the Freedom Convoy overnight, sparking massive delays.
route is the busiest for freight connecting the two nations, and the blockade could have a major impact on the supply chain to cities like Detroit. pic.twitter.com/WITXhQSRVP
— TheCrimsonWorm (@PrtyOfNone) February 8, 2022
Experts advocated an intervention they once thought useless
Last summer, as the Delta wave was upending hopes that widespread vaccination would end the pandemic, several Democratic-run cities and states in America reintroduced the mask mandates they had ditched earlier in the year. A few other blue states and cities, notably New York, as well as many Republican-led states and municipalities, opted not to require masking again at that point.
A town in upstate New York is standing up to the bullies of the cultural establishment.
Recent events in Cambridge, a small town in Washington County in upstate New York, show that the colonising ambitions of the woke elites can be resisted.
Cambridge has drawn the ire of the woke establishment in recent years because its school district uses the nickname ‘Indians’. Worse, many of its logos use the face of a Native American and a Native American serves as the mascot for its sports teams.
The only real recent public service of elites has been to persuade us why they were never elites at all.
An elite is always variously defined.
The ideal elites, as ancient philosophers argued, were a “natural elite” due to their exemplary character, aptitude, and work ethic. Understandably, a towering few ascended from all walks of life to positions of power, influence, and occasional wealth.
But such a natural meritocracy, for obvious reasons, rarely leads to an equality of result.
Protesters against Covid vaccine mandates have defied government calls for them to end a 10-day occupation of Canada’s capital, a day after the city’s mayor declared a state of emergency and promised to “get the city back”.
Ottawa police have described the protest as a “siege” on the city, where hundreds of trucks and cars have blockaded the downtown areas. On Sunday, Mayor Jim Watson warned that officials were “losing this battle”, and a civil class-action lawsuit was filed against protesters over the incessant horn blasting and disruption to daily life.
Tommy Robinson delivers a stunning documentary on Muslim rape gangs.
On May 25, 2018, Tommy Robinson was standing outside the courthouse in Leeds, England, microphone in hand, reporting live on the trial of several Muslims for child rape, when, without prior warning, he was arrested for breach of peace, hustled into a van, and, within the space of four hours, tried, convicted, and sentenced to thirteen months’ incarceration – not, curiously enough, for breach of peace but for contempt of court. Conveyed tout de suite to the prison in Kingston upon Hull, he spent much of the next year and a half in and out of lockup, undergoing physical and psychological torment while behind bars and the rankest of forensic malpractice while at the so-called bar of justice.
The CCP is building ‘civilisation centers’ to create a ‘collective soul’
New structures have been seen sprouting up in towns and cities across China. But these aren’t the usual overproduced apartment blocks. They are “New Era Civilization Practice Centers,” hubs from which a vast army of volunteers will host movie nights and vocational education classes, sort trash, visit the elderly, and generally inculcate more “civilized behavior” in Chinese citizens. Their stated mission: to “solve problems for the masses, so that every family can feel the warmth of the Party and the government.”
As detailed in a new report by the website ChinaFile, thousands of these centres have appeared and started providing social services since they first began being trialled in 2018.
Our elites are finally waking up to the consequences — or maybe they’re just scared of growing public anger
Is a modicum of sanity about to reassert itself regarding the Wuhan Flu? Are the people finally exhausted by their panic over the Fauci-altered coronavirus? Remember those little bulletins that Mike Pence carried around, enjoining us all to to take “fifteen days to stop the spread”? I think we’re at about day 750 now.
Welcome to the age of minilateralism.
Irrespective of whether Europe emerges from its current crisis without a war, it will almost certainly emerge battered and with alliances shaken. Regional ties that had been cultivated since World War II and that had already started to fray have been largely upended by Russia’s renewed menacing of the European security order.
Like the bankruptcy in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, the change has happened “Gradually, then suddenly.” The age of a united and multilateral West may be over, with the age of minilateralism beginning.
For a while there, the far-left Canadian government contented itself with deplatforming and defunding the striking Canadian truckers who are in Ottawa protesting the country’s vaccine mandate.
That didn’t work, so now they’ve gotten worse.
The “Freedom Convoy” of truckers and supporters protesting vaccine mandates and COVID-19 restrictions in Ottawa has garnered international media attention and even spurred similar movements around the world.
Media outlets across the globe from France to India have covered the demonstrations in Canada’s capital with varying takes on what the convoy means and represents.
