“China eats weird animals disease”

The deposition of Canada’s prime minister is unlikely to be so sanguinary as the Ceaușescus in Romania. But it will be no less definitive.

As I write, Canadian police, many dressed in military garb and supported by armored vehicles and snipers(!), are moving in to enforce several court orders and demands of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, and others that the “Freedom Convoy” of Canadian truckers stop blocking the Ambassador Bridge, the major artery between the United States and Canada, and disperse. Some of the protestors are leaving while many others are standing their ground.

Will the heavy hand of the state succeed in crushing the protest? In the short term, perhaps.

The US media are shamefully smearing the ‘Freedom Convoy’ as a far-right menace.

By now, most Americans have heard of the truckers’ actions happening north of the border. Based on lurid descriptions of the protests from the US media, they could be forgiven for thinking these protesters are a small bunch of nasty thugs and Nazis who must be put down immediately. Indeed, it seems American reporters and commentators have decided to project all of their hatred of Trumpists and deplorable workers generally on to the Canadian truckers.

Let’s examine Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s statement yet again on Friday that “politicians don’t direct police in a democratic society,” which is nonsense.

If that was true, the police would be a law unto themselves, which is what happens in dictatorships.

Two members of the military’s elite special forces unit are under investigation for their alleged involvement in the convoy protest in Ottawa, according to a statement from the Department of National Defence.

Maj.-Gen Steve Boivin, commander of the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, said the first case came to the attention of senior leaders on Feb. 1, and the other on Feb. 10.

Both members were already in the process of being released from the Canadian Armed Forces and were supporting the protest “in some form or another,” he said.

The approach to medical information increasingly taken by authorities and the media is damaging to public health and scientific inquiry.

Imperial County, California, a poor, largely Hispanic agricultural region in the southeastern corner of the state, has been hit hard by Covid-19. By the end of January, according to the New York Times’s Covid-19 database, Imperial County had suffered 845 Covid deaths, or 4.7 per thousand inhabitants—a rate almost 80 percent higher than the U.S. average. The case fatality rate in Imperial County is 1.44 percent, the second-highest in California—and was significantly higher, 2.10 percent, at the end of October 2021 before the Omicron wave.

The OPP says the aim of an officer going to the door of a farm in Peterborough County was merely to try to keep things “safe and lawful.”

Responding to a Saturday column on a woman named Nadine Ellis-Maffei being surprised to see a cop knock on her door with advice on how to act at the Freedom Convoy, the OPP said it was merely doing its policing duties.

Police made several arrests as they cleared out protesters and vehicles blockading the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ont., but the bridge was not yet open to traffic on Sunday.

Dozens of trucks, cars, pickups and vans have blocked traffic in both directions at Canada’s busiest border crossing to the U.S. for several days. By Sunday morning, the trucks and remaining protesters were greeted by a heavy police presence, with more than 50 vehicles, including cruisers, buses and an armoured car.

Latest update from the Ambassador Bridge protest:

Police made arrests & removed vehicles earlier. Most police left. Some roads remain closed with cement barriers. A group of protestors remains.

Via: PinkZebra / YT#Windsor #Ontario #AmbassadorBridge #TruckersForFreedom2022 pic.twitter.com/0g61OoRnXg

— DaveO ⚔️ 🗽 (@Patri0tCx_) February 13, 2022

Ottawa mayor made a ‘backchannel’ deal to remove convoy from ‘residential’ areas

Ottawa’s mayor says he’s reached a “backchannel” deal with convoy organizers to limit the three-week occupation’s to the area immediately surrounding Parliament Hill.

But Ottawa police’s plans to bring an ultimate end to the demonstrations – which showed few signs of slowing Sunday – have once again been called into question, after reports they’ve provided no detailed plan to federal law enforcement partners.

In a stunning Sunday statement, Mayor Jim Watson’s office says he successfully negotiated with convoy organizers to leave all “residential” areas in the city by Monday.

The blockade of Ottawa has sparked copycat action around the globe, and such disparate demonstrations of grievance may prove hard to shut down

It only took six dozen trucks, and a few hundred protesters to bring Canada’s capital to a standstill and close a critical border crossing with the US, throttling the car industry that straddles the line between both countries and relies on a constant flow of trade.

On Saturday, Canadian authorities finally began taking action to clear the Ambassador Bridge into the US, the busiest land crossing in North America, which had been blockaded by just over a dozen trucks and smaller vehicles, and a crowd a few hundred strong.

The bridge has been closed for the best part of a week now, and meanwhile downtown Ottawa has been under a form of siege for more than a fortnight, blockaded by crowds gathered under the banner of opposition to Covid regulations.

A lot of people around the world are asking how it is that pleasant little Canada, of all places, has suddenly turned into a firebrand of a nation, spurring controversial blockades and convoy protests that are now being copied in other countries.

The answer is simply that frustrations are boiling over after two incredibly tense years. This is especially so in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, which have been some of the most locked-down regions in the world.

‘Canada has absolutely ZERO jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here at GiveSendGo’

More than half of the funding for the Canadian trucker convoy protesters on some online platforms is coming from the United States, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday.

Trudeau said he spoke with U.S. President Joe Biden about the American and “global” influences on the protests against COVID-19 mandates, which have blocked streets in downtown Ottawa and border crossings to the U.S.

OTTAWA — The federal government is prepared to invoke the Emergencies Act to see the trucker convoy protests and blockades end, says Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair, calling it a “critical situation,” while also saying that police need to “do their job.”

“We have an emergency act that I will tell you, there has been a near-constant and vigorous examination of those authorities and what’s required,” Blair said in an interview on CTV’s Question Period.

The federal government warned Saturday that consequences for trucker convoy protesters who break the law will be “increasingly severe” as an occupation in Ottawa extends past two weeks and blockades spring up across the country.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau convened a meeting Saturday with ministers and senior officials to see how protests, occupations and blockades can be brought “under control.”

MUST WATCH: A veteran in Ottawa UNLOADS on CBC, “Get out of here!” pic.twitter.com/H0BmbMz5rd

— Angelo Isidorou (@angeloisidorou) February 12, 2022

h/t RM

SURREY, B.C. – Several commercial trucks and a military-style vehicle broke through an RCMP barricade on the Pacific Highway as they followed protesters marching to the border crossing at approximately 2 p.m. Saturday afternoon.

Several officers were cut off from their colleagues by what Mounties described as a hostile mob. Hundreds of protesters celebrated on foot near the border crossing, with traffic at a standstill through a massive area of south Surrey.