wheatdevil
wheatdevil
Post rating:
+
A quick scan through American media outlets with regard to the recent protests in Canada would lead you to believe that a vast majority of Canadians have finally hit a breaking point-- but, pray tell, what "breaking point" would that be? Joe Concha, an opinion writer for The Hill says, "(the) country is almost fully vaccinated, with nearly 85 percent of the population receiving at least one jab. That makes Canada one of the most vaccinated populations in the world." (1). A similar perspective comes from CNN's Paula Newton, who says with regards to the composition of the protest, "Nearly 90% of Canada's truckers are fully vaccinated and eligible to cross the border, according to the Canadian government. So, the protesting truckers represent a "small, fringe minority," Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau..." and that, "the protest has attracted support from thousands more Canadians, even some who are fully vaccinated, who say they want all Covid-19 preventative measures dropped, including mask mandates, lockdowns and restrictions on gatherings."(2).
Increasingly odd is the fact that this line of reasoning is trotted out as if it is a coherent point being made by people who are paid for analysis of these kinds of events. Primarily, the anger directed at the federal government for the lockdowns developed, deployed and enforced by provincial governments are not once mentioned-- nor is the fact that out of the 13 currently sitting Premiers, 8 are considered part of a Conservative party (5 PCs; Doug Ford, Tim Houston, Blaine Higgs, the newly minted Heather Stefanson replacing the former PC leader Brian Pallister, and Dennis King-- the other 3 right-wing Premiers, Jason Kenney, Scott Moe and François Legault all are part of province-specific right wing coalition parties-- the UCP, Saskatchewan Party and the Coalition Avenir Québec, a French-nationalist and conservative Québec-centered party). This is important as the "federal mandates" themselves have almost nothing to do with the complaints of the protestors-- the federal mandates on truckers entering or leaving Canada is enforced both by the Trudeau and Biden admins and have been in place since the Trump admin-- in fact, confusingly, the Trump admin placed restrictions on land-border crossings but not air-travel, which continues today ("U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) told CBC News that its travel restrictions apply only to Canadians trying to enter the U.S. at land border crossings, which includes travel by car, train, ferry and pleasure boats.") (Harris, 2020 (3).
A second element of this is the fact that all provincial responses to the crisis have been uniquely individualized between provinces (and often much, much less elaborate in places with low population centres like the Northwestern Territories and the Maritimes) and are now in the process of being totally eliminated anyways-- Alberta dropped all of its restrictions twice already, once in the summer of 2021, and again in February 2022 in the middle of a 3rd wave which wound up being equally as deadly as the second wave and roughly in line with the average mortality of the 1st. Doug Ford himself imposed lockdowns that outlets like the BBC referred to as "one of the world's longest" (Levinson-King, 2021, 4) and is poised to dismantle the entire passport system and restrictions on gatherings and events within the next few weeks, and yet the largely-incoherent demands of the protest groups have almost unanimously called for the resignation of PM Justin Trudeau-- and some going further to demand the resignation of multiple Liberal and NDP MPs, but never Conservative premieres who were in charge of crafting and executing the actual lockdowns that these protests are reacting to. Most of the organizational fervor of this group is amorphous due to the incoherence of its members-- the most obvious bit of manic political theatre was "Memorandum of Understanding"-- produced by some of the self-appointed "leaders" of this protest group-- was a pseudo-legal document based off a misunderstanding of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which was used to attempt to "force" an election (despite an already unpopular Federal snap election in September 2021 by Justin Trudeau in which he easily maintained his minority government position). This document was swiftly retracted by its own members and includes the hilarious line, "We represent the voice of many Canadians who desire to have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms upheld. We are everyday Canadians, not lawyers or politicians." (Accessed Feb. 2022, 5)-- we demand you uphold-- with some as-of-yet-unknown legal framework detailed inside-- a document that we are unable to parse even a little bit.
What is the character of these protests then? As The Hill and CNN and other outlets uncritically view it, this is a minority of people, who-- after being fed up with government interference in their lives, set out with a clear goal and ideals: the repeal of vaccine mandates-- but what mandates? Ontario lifted its capacity limits in early February, and is discontinuing its passport system on March 1st, 2022-- far swifter than many had anticipated. Alberta and Saskatchewan have both dropped their mandates entirely, with Saskatchewan Premiere Scott Moe quipping that lockdowns cause "significant harm for no significant benefit." (Sciarpelletti, Jan 2022, 6). Like in the US, many pundits wax lyrical with regards to the severity and widespread nature of these lockdowns, but many will look to fairly basic public health measures like mask-mandates or capacity limits instead of hard stay-at-home orders to decry "tyrannical" government interference. At this point before continuing, I would like to note two things, one, at the time of writing, the death rate of Americans infected with COVID continues to vacillate between the mid-triple digits to sometimes over 3000 people per day-- and two, every state in America currently has rescinded its stay-at-home orders fully; some states (California for example) still maintain a technical lockdown order in the sense that there was never a full "retraction", however, as of June 2020, California lifted mask-mandates for vaccinated individuals and all business are allowed to resume normal operations. In a sense, the only true "limits" on individual consumption in the US-- and given the current political trajectory, Canada as well-- is social pressure to wear a mask in specific situations, or to line up to enter a store occasionally. So then why even mention "mandates" or even intimate that there is a larger, broader goal to this movement? Why is this line of thinking, once unique to America's total failure to prevent a national disaster, taken as a "common-sense" approach to "winding down" a still-ongoing pandemic in another country? Very simply, because to argue nuance in the face of extremely polarized political debate is akin to pissing into the wind.
In a sense, the "Freedom Convoy" is a violent, reactionary group of petite-bourgeois. The "trucker" contingent of the convoy itself was fairly pathetic-- the OPP reported that 113 commercial vehicles were part of the 389 vehicles that had travelled from Sault Ste. Marie to Ottawa-- Kingston Police reported later (on Jan 28th, 2022) that "17 full tractor trailers, 104 tractors no trailers, 424 passenger vehicles and 6 RVs" were the grand total from YGK (Kingston Airport, roughly 210 km from Ottawa) (7). If 10% of Canadian truckers are unvaccinated, this leaves roughly 22,700 unvaccinated or partially vaccinated truckers. This turnout in Ottawa thus comprises slightly more than 2% of this population. Many of the participants have "tongue-in-cheek" adopted the "fringe minority" moniker-- much in the same embarrassing way conservatives take on the term "deplorable" years after the 2016 election, or Liberal resistance grifters still waiting on their precious "Blue Wave" to fix their rapidly disintegrating country. As an aside, it also plays into the self-conscious desire of many Canadians to simply be Americans-- take for example, the limp-dicked attempt at rebranding "Let's Go Brandon" to "Let's Go Brandeau"-- a shocking lack of imagination belies the fact these people are obsessed with a culture war rather than a social or material reality. Why then is there such outsized reporting on this "convoy" of 2% of 10% of an industry that represents 0.6% of Canada's total workforce as a "workers movement" or even a coherent collection of individuals? The answer is simple: this is a powerful political reactionary force that runs unopposed by politicians because they are the cohort to whom most beneficial legislation is dedicated.
We begin now to get into more "opinion" territory than fact when we start dissecting larger and larger sections of this movement, but it's also erroneous to do what I have previously done above in calculating the protestors as a concentrated labour force as well. Many of the additional supporters were not truckers, but rather people who could afford to drive their personal car thousands of kilometres across the world's second-largest country with only vague promises of reimbursement. The US-border blockade in Windsor for example attracted, "protesters ranging in size from 50 up to 200 who parked about 50 to 75 vehicles — mostly pickup trucks — on Huron Church Road." (Saylors, Feb 2022, 8). The premise of using vehicles to disguise protest magnitude has been obvious from the outset, but a shocking dearth of actual trucks and the volume of SUVs, personal pickup trucks and large vehicles point to a large amount of protestors who can afford both purchase, own and insure a vehicles while simultaneously and indefinitely postponing employment. On the fringe, I am sure there are some misguided souls who will be fired or be facing severe economic hardship-- but for the vast majority of these protestors, the fact that they are able to do this is already a sign of a class of people completely divorced from the material reality of Canadians. For example, an Angus Reid poll in January 2022 finds that "...approaching three-in-five (57%) Canadians say that it is currently difficult to feed their household. In 2019, when the Angus Reid Institute asked this same question, 36 per cent said this aspect of their finances was causing them difficulty." (Angus Reid, January 2022, 9). The protest demands, though wild and chaotic, do not focus on a deepening economic worry for most Canadians, but instead focus solely on mild restrictions upon consumption, or their inability to force others back into places of employment. The worry for these protestors is not the lack of ability to put food on the table, in fact, things like the Coutts blockade and the Detroit-Windsor blockade provide plenty of opportunity for major grocers like Loblaws to jack their prices up-- to dive deeper into this for example, grocery prices are 5-7% more expensive in 2022 (10) but with specific industries seeing larger spikes than others-- dairy (6-8%) vs Meat/Seafood (0-2%). This is the same with gasoline, seeing a 33%-43.6% price increase (Evans, Dec 2021, 11). These numbers tell the tale of the actual rationale behind the "inflation" moniker-- inflation, typically meant to indicate the purchasing power of the currency against all commodities, is now broadly used to mean "price increases"-- that individual markets are looking to boost their returns as quickly as possible, and that the pinch being felt by Canadians is subsumed into a "market inevitability" rather than confronting the interests involved in these gouging techniques-- Loblaws, having paid out millions of dollars in a bread price-fixing scandal in 2018, notes than in Q3 2021, "Revenue was $16,050 million. This represented an increase of $379 million, or 2.4% when compared to the third quarter of 2020" and that with this windfall, instead of increasing wages or re-introducing pandemic hazard pay to its employees, they instead "...repurchased, for cancellation, 3.4 million common shares at a cost of $300 million and 13.6 million common shares at a cost of $1,000 million on a year-to-date basis." (12). These price increases are clearly not in line with economic indicators and also are directly responsible for both higher consumer prices and larger and larger ROI for grocery chains-- in fact, if the value output for grocery chains are considered, Second Harvest-- the non-profit food rescue organization-- would account for $33 billion in food distribution, making it Canada's second-largest grocery outlet. (13). To draw this all together, these are figures and numbers that scream "national crisis" and yet food affordability is not one of the demands of the protest convoy, in fact, the price increases in their mind simply solidify their "point" that vaccine mandates are causing inflation. This is about as pig-fuckingly stupid an analysis as you could possibly get, but it's also a politically convenient smokescreen, so it is digested as-is by the commentariat.
The material reality of most Canadians-- and in fact, most Americans too-- is fundamentally different from those who have participated in this movement. While erstwhile Land Back and anti-pipeline movements are beaten into submission and broken on the wheel of commerce and in service of fossil fuel projects that run billions and billions of dollars over budget; for example, the Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion surging to over $21.4B (Williams, Feb 2022, 14), yet in the face of these blockades and occupations, the police and the RCMP must be essentially legislated and forced into compliance to clear the streets of downtown Ottawa, and do so in a manner more reminiscent of trying to clear the cafeteria in an old-age home than dismantling a weeks-long siege of the capital city of the country. I don't want a bunch of jack-booted freaks to start cracking skulls of course, that is the equally sick liberal desire to see a deeper entrenchment of the police state, but it is alarmingly instructive alongside all other bits of information surrounding this "movement". Much has been made about the violent, white-supremacist character of the protest, which is also equally true; but moreover, even the broader perspective of these protestors is completely uncharitable and ignorant as well-- so much so that the fact that they are receiving preferential treatment is nauseating to witness even when the violent, hateful rhetoric is neatly sanitized by both US and Canadian media. The reactionary character, the white supremacist involvement, foreign funding coming through multiple ad-hoc financial networks, etc.; all of this should be taken in and understood as a whole AGAINST the backdrop of a real crisis and subordination of the working class. To attempt to microscopically analyze this movement as individuals against tyranny misses the forest for the trees-- this is an attempt to put individuals above the entirety of society, a movement of land-owning, vehicle-driving reactionaries that ensures that more and more will drown to death on dry land, sucking and gasping against a mechanical ventilator, so that Boston Pizza will keep serving their suspiciously named "Bandera Bread" to even the most childish of needle-fearing dickheads. You don't need to pretend it is anything else but that.
Increasingly odd is the fact that this line of reasoning is trotted out as if it is a coherent point being made by people who are paid for analysis of these kinds of events. Primarily, the anger directed at the federal government for the lockdowns developed, deployed and enforced by provincial governments are not once mentioned-- nor is the fact that out of the 13 currently sitting Premiers, 8 are considered part of a Conservative party (5 PCs; Doug Ford, Tim Houston, Blaine Higgs, the newly minted Heather Stefanson replacing the former PC leader Brian Pallister, and Dennis King-- the other 3 right-wing Premiers, Jason Kenney, Scott Moe and François Legault all are part of province-specific right wing coalition parties-- the UCP, Saskatchewan Party and the Coalition Avenir Québec, a French-nationalist and conservative Québec-centered party). This is important as the "federal mandates" themselves have almost nothing to do with the complaints of the protestors-- the federal mandates on truckers entering or leaving Canada is enforced both by the Trudeau and Biden admins and have been in place since the Trump admin-- in fact, confusingly, the Trump admin placed restrictions on land-border crossings but not air-travel, which continues today ("U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) told CBC News that its travel restrictions apply only to Canadians trying to enter the U.S. at land border crossings, which includes travel by car, train, ferry and pleasure boats.") (Harris, 2020 (3).
A second element of this is the fact that all provincial responses to the crisis have been uniquely individualized between provinces (and often much, much less elaborate in places with low population centres like the Northwestern Territories and the Maritimes) and are now in the process of being totally eliminated anyways-- Alberta dropped all of its restrictions twice already, once in the summer of 2021, and again in February 2022 in the middle of a 3rd wave which wound up being equally as deadly as the second wave and roughly in line with the average mortality of the 1st. Doug Ford himself imposed lockdowns that outlets like the BBC referred to as "one of the world's longest" (Levinson-King, 2021, 4) and is poised to dismantle the entire passport system and restrictions on gatherings and events within the next few weeks, and yet the largely-incoherent demands of the protest groups have almost unanimously called for the resignation of PM Justin Trudeau-- and some going further to demand the resignation of multiple Liberal and NDP MPs, but never Conservative premieres who were in charge of crafting and executing the actual lockdowns that these protests are reacting to. Most of the organizational fervor of this group is amorphous due to the incoherence of its members-- the most obvious bit of manic political theatre was "Memorandum of Understanding"-- produced by some of the self-appointed "leaders" of this protest group-- was a pseudo-legal document based off a misunderstanding of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which was used to attempt to "force" an election (despite an already unpopular Federal snap election in September 2021 by Justin Trudeau in which he easily maintained his minority government position). This document was swiftly retracted by its own members and includes the hilarious line, "We represent the voice of many Canadians who desire to have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms upheld. We are everyday Canadians, not lawyers or politicians." (Accessed Feb. 2022, 5)-- we demand you uphold-- with some as-of-yet-unknown legal framework detailed inside-- a document that we are unable to parse even a little bit.
What is the character of these protests then? As The Hill and CNN and other outlets uncritically view it, this is a minority of people, who-- after being fed up with government interference in their lives, set out with a clear goal and ideals: the repeal of vaccine mandates-- but what mandates? Ontario lifted its capacity limits in early February, and is discontinuing its passport system on March 1st, 2022-- far swifter than many had anticipated. Alberta and Saskatchewan have both dropped their mandates entirely, with Saskatchewan Premiere Scott Moe quipping that lockdowns cause "significant harm for no significant benefit." (Sciarpelletti, Jan 2022, 6). Like in the US, many pundits wax lyrical with regards to the severity and widespread nature of these lockdowns, but many will look to fairly basic public health measures like mask-mandates or capacity limits instead of hard stay-at-home orders to decry "tyrannical" government interference. At this point before continuing, I would like to note two things, one, at the time of writing, the death rate of Americans infected with COVID continues to vacillate between the mid-triple digits to sometimes over 3000 people per day-- and two, every state in America currently has rescinded its stay-at-home orders fully; some states (California for example) still maintain a technical lockdown order in the sense that there was never a full "retraction", however, as of June 2020, California lifted mask-mandates for vaccinated individuals and all business are allowed to resume normal operations. In a sense, the only true "limits" on individual consumption in the US-- and given the current political trajectory, Canada as well-- is social pressure to wear a mask in specific situations, or to line up to enter a store occasionally. So then why even mention "mandates" or even intimate that there is a larger, broader goal to this movement? Why is this line of thinking, once unique to America's total failure to prevent a national disaster, taken as a "common-sense" approach to "winding down" a still-ongoing pandemic in another country? Very simply, because to argue nuance in the face of extremely polarized political debate is akin to pissing into the wind.
In a sense, the "Freedom Convoy" is a violent, reactionary group of petite-bourgeois. The "trucker" contingent of the convoy itself was fairly pathetic-- the OPP reported that 113 commercial vehicles were part of the 389 vehicles that had travelled from Sault Ste. Marie to Ottawa-- Kingston Police reported later (on Jan 28th, 2022) that "17 full tractor trailers, 104 tractors no trailers, 424 passenger vehicles and 6 RVs" were the grand total from YGK (Kingston Airport, roughly 210 km from Ottawa) (7). If 10% of Canadian truckers are unvaccinated, this leaves roughly 22,700 unvaccinated or partially vaccinated truckers. This turnout in Ottawa thus comprises slightly more than 2% of this population. Many of the participants have "tongue-in-cheek" adopted the "fringe minority" moniker-- much in the same embarrassing way conservatives take on the term "deplorable" years after the 2016 election, or Liberal resistance grifters still waiting on their precious "Blue Wave" to fix their rapidly disintegrating country. As an aside, it also plays into the self-conscious desire of many Canadians to simply be Americans-- take for example, the limp-dicked attempt at rebranding "Let's Go Brandon" to "Let's Go Brandeau"-- a shocking lack of imagination belies the fact these people are obsessed with a culture war rather than a social or material reality. Why then is there such outsized reporting on this "convoy" of 2% of 10% of an industry that represents 0.6% of Canada's total workforce as a "workers movement" or even a coherent collection of individuals? The answer is simple: this is a powerful political reactionary force that runs unopposed by politicians because they are the cohort to whom most beneficial legislation is dedicated.
We begin now to get into more "opinion" territory than fact when we start dissecting larger and larger sections of this movement, but it's also erroneous to do what I have previously done above in calculating the protestors as a concentrated labour force as well. Many of the additional supporters were not truckers, but rather people who could afford to drive their personal car thousands of kilometres across the world's second-largest country with only vague promises of reimbursement. The US-border blockade in Windsor for example attracted, "protesters ranging in size from 50 up to 200 who parked about 50 to 75 vehicles — mostly pickup trucks — on Huron Church Road." (Saylors, Feb 2022, 8). The premise of using vehicles to disguise protest magnitude has been obvious from the outset, but a shocking dearth of actual trucks and the volume of SUVs, personal pickup trucks and large vehicles point to a large amount of protestors who can afford both purchase, own and insure a vehicles while simultaneously and indefinitely postponing employment. On the fringe, I am sure there are some misguided souls who will be fired or be facing severe economic hardship-- but for the vast majority of these protestors, the fact that they are able to do this is already a sign of a class of people completely divorced from the material reality of Canadians. For example, an Angus Reid poll in January 2022 finds that "...approaching three-in-five (57%) Canadians say that it is currently difficult to feed their household. In 2019, when the Angus Reid Institute asked this same question, 36 per cent said this aspect of their finances was causing them difficulty." (Angus Reid, January 2022, 9). The protest demands, though wild and chaotic, do not focus on a deepening economic worry for most Canadians, but instead focus solely on mild restrictions upon consumption, or their inability to force others back into places of employment. The worry for these protestors is not the lack of ability to put food on the table, in fact, things like the Coutts blockade and the Detroit-Windsor blockade provide plenty of opportunity for major grocers like Loblaws to jack their prices up-- to dive deeper into this for example, grocery prices are 5-7% more expensive in 2022 (10) but with specific industries seeing larger spikes than others-- dairy (6-8%) vs Meat/Seafood (0-2%). This is the same with gasoline, seeing a 33%-43.6% price increase (Evans, Dec 2021, 11). These numbers tell the tale of the actual rationale behind the "inflation" moniker-- inflation, typically meant to indicate the purchasing power of the currency against all commodities, is now broadly used to mean "price increases"-- that individual markets are looking to boost their returns as quickly as possible, and that the pinch being felt by Canadians is subsumed into a "market inevitability" rather than confronting the interests involved in these gouging techniques-- Loblaws, having paid out millions of dollars in a bread price-fixing scandal in 2018, notes than in Q3 2021, "Revenue was $16,050 million. This represented an increase of $379 million, or 2.4% when compared to the third quarter of 2020" and that with this windfall, instead of increasing wages or re-introducing pandemic hazard pay to its employees, they instead "...repurchased, for cancellation, 3.4 million common shares at a cost of $300 million and 13.6 million common shares at a cost of $1,000 million on a year-to-date basis." (12). These price increases are clearly not in line with economic indicators and also are directly responsible for both higher consumer prices and larger and larger ROI for grocery chains-- in fact, if the value output for grocery chains are considered, Second Harvest-- the non-profit food rescue organization-- would account for $33 billion in food distribution, making it Canada's second-largest grocery outlet. (13). To draw this all together, these are figures and numbers that scream "national crisis" and yet food affordability is not one of the demands of the protest convoy, in fact, the price increases in their mind simply solidify their "point" that vaccine mandates are causing inflation. This is about as pig-fuckingly stupid an analysis as you could possibly get, but it's also a politically convenient smokescreen, so it is digested as-is by the commentariat.
The material reality of most Canadians-- and in fact, most Americans too-- is fundamentally different from those who have participated in this movement. While erstwhile Land Back and anti-pipeline movements are beaten into submission and broken on the wheel of commerce and in service of fossil fuel projects that run billions and billions of dollars over budget; for example, the Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion surging to over $21.4B (Williams, Feb 2022, 14), yet in the face of these blockades and occupations, the police and the RCMP must be essentially legislated and forced into compliance to clear the streets of downtown Ottawa, and do so in a manner more reminiscent of trying to clear the cafeteria in an old-age home than dismantling a weeks-long siege of the capital city of the country. I don't want a bunch of jack-booted freaks to start cracking skulls of course, that is the equally sick liberal desire to see a deeper entrenchment of the police state, but it is alarmingly instructive alongside all other bits of information surrounding this "movement". Much has been made about the violent, white-supremacist character of the protest, which is also equally true; but moreover, even the broader perspective of these protestors is completely uncharitable and ignorant as well-- so much so that the fact that they are receiving preferential treatment is nauseating to witness even when the violent, hateful rhetoric is neatly sanitized by both US and Canadian media. The reactionary character, the white supremacist involvement, foreign funding coming through multiple ad-hoc financial networks, etc.; all of this should be taken in and understood as a whole AGAINST the backdrop of a real crisis and subordination of the working class. To attempt to microscopically analyze this movement as individuals against tyranny misses the forest for the trees-- this is an attempt to put individuals above the entirety of society, a movement of land-owning, vehicle-driving reactionaries that ensures that more and more will drown to death on dry land, sucking and gasping against a mechanical ventilator, so that Boston Pizza will keep serving their suspiciously named "Bandera Bread" to even the most childish of needle-fearing dickheads. You don't need to pretend it is anything else but that.
Edited by wheatdevil ()
gay_swimmer
gay_swimmer
Post rating:
~
Frontpage
gay_swimmer
gay_swimmer
Post rating:
+
I don't have anything to add but I find it kind of delightful, the naivete and egotism of the convoy and its supporters. They really thought they could get Justin Trudeau to sit down and negotiate an unilateral end to all public health restrictions! They were shocked the cops didn't switch sides!
There's now a letter writing campaign going around where if a million people write info@gg.ca and demand the Governor-General 'remove' Justin Trudeau, they're legally required to do it.
Of course it's totally unfair to make fun of these people and their total mystification by anything that might have been in a high school civics course. They're the White Working Class(tm) and they're supposed to be stupid - and stupid babies need the most attention.
There's now a letter writing campaign going around where if a million people write info@gg.ca and demand the Governor-General 'remove' Justin Trudeau, they're legally required to do it.
Of course it's totally unfair to make fun of these people and their total mystification by anything that might have been in a high school civics course. They're the White Working Class(tm) and they're supposed to be stupid - and stupid babies need the most attention.
Edited by gay_swimmer ()
shriekingviolet
shriekingviolet
Post rating:
+
When the "Freedom Convoy" set up shop and blockaded the US border crossing in Alberta, we got our usual extra helping of fun contradictions. That's the Alberta Advantage. See, in the salvo of revanchist spite legislation fired out of the legislature by the UCP to reverse any and all tiny slivers of good the socdem NDP managed to ineffectually fart out while briefly in office, they passed the "Critical Infrastructure Defense Act," a direct and specific Fuck You to environmentalist and Indigenous activists opposing illegal pipeline construction through sovereign Indigenous land. The Critical Infrastructure Defense Act is a comprehensively redundant list of infrastructure installments, including roads, that the provincial government wanted to make it very clear back in 2020 they were going to arrest and jail people for obstructing, planning to obstruct, or aiding and advising in obstruction. No warrant required, entirely up to the kkkop's discretion.
I don't think they anticipated their loyal voter base would be the first ones to really put the new law to the test. So obviously they didn't dare use it, and if you've seen the cops hugging the blockaders as they tenderly whisper "beloved, would you please move if it's not too inconvenient," you know they really couldn't enforce it even if they tried. In what would be an embarrassing moment if these slugs knew any shame, people remembered the legislation and started asking why they weren't using it.
So now they have a problem. Everyone is pissed at them: people with their head screwed on right hate them for destroying our public health system and sabotaging any chance of a reasonable response to the pandemic, even the most credulous of liberals understands the obvious white supremacist double standard at play with the Infrastructure Defense Act gathering dust, and their rabid cracker base hates them for mildly disturbing the greasy half-conscious dream of their effortless slide through life. The UCP can't make the problem go away, so instead they've cleverly deflected: First by screeching to high heaven "oh god help we're so vulnerable we can't deal with this help HELP oh no poor us WhY Is'Nt ThE fEd DoInG SoMeThInG! The monster Justin Trudeau won't help because he hates you!" and then whip crack pivoting to condemnation of the brutal tyrant federal government the moment they did exactly what they were asked. As unbelievably transparent as these histrionics are, they're working. Who knows, now that it's officially someone else's fault, maybe they'll even use that bullshit law they wrote.
I think that's neat. I really respect the hustle.
I don't think they anticipated their loyal voter base would be the first ones to really put the new law to the test. So obviously they didn't dare use it, and if you've seen the cops hugging the blockaders as they tenderly whisper "beloved, would you please move if it's not too inconvenient," you know they really couldn't enforce it even if they tried. In what would be an embarrassing moment if these slugs knew any shame, people remembered the legislation and started asking why they weren't using it.
So now they have a problem. Everyone is pissed at them: people with their head screwed on right hate them for destroying our public health system and sabotaging any chance of a reasonable response to the pandemic, even the most credulous of liberals understands the obvious white supremacist double standard at play with the Infrastructure Defense Act gathering dust, and their rabid cracker base hates them for mildly disturbing the greasy half-conscious dream of their effortless slide through life. The UCP can't make the problem go away, so instead they've cleverly deflected: First by screeching to high heaven "oh god help we're so vulnerable we can't deal with this help HELP oh no poor us WhY Is'Nt ThE fEd DoInG SoMeThInG! The monster Justin Trudeau won't help because he hates you!" and then whip crack pivoting to condemnation of the brutal tyrant federal government the moment they did exactly what they were asked. As unbelievably transparent as these histrionics are, they're working. Who knows, now that it's officially someone else's fault, maybe they'll even use that bullshit law they wrote.
I think that's neat. I really respect the hustle.
wheatdevil
wheatdevil
Post rating:
+
The Ontario government is also drafting up some fucking horrifying new clause that makes blocking "infrastructure" (love a vaguely defined term) into a felony as well-- this is really cool because all of his (Ford) friends are large developers and he's already been attempting to build as many shitty new highways to nowhere as he can before environmental assessments can even be filed. Add on something like that totally bullshit Costal GasLink "attack" being timed this perfectly and obviously really means that whatever these "powers" are meant to do have nothing to do with these protests, it's more genocidal land grabbing destruction, and the speed of the turnaround on calling legitimate protestors and Indigenous land defenders "dangerous infrastructure terrorists" is going to be even more obvious.
shriekingviolet
shriekingviolet
Post rating:
~
wheatdevil posted:whatever these "powers" are meant to do have nothing to do with these protests, it's more genocidal land grabbing destruction, and the speed of the turnaround on calling legitimate protestors and Indigenous land defenders "dangerous infrastructure terrorists" is going to be even more obvious.
yeah the cops and military already consider Indigenous rights to be terrorism so they'll be overjoyed to leverage this. don't need to teach everyone here how insanely racist canada is but they're absolutely going to milk the memory of the convoy for all its worth to get more idiot libs on their side next time they roll up to the reserves with bulldozers and assault rifles.
karphead
karphead
Post rating:
+
gay_swimmer posted:They're the White Working Class(tm) and they're supposed to be stupid - and stupid babies need the most attention.
they even look like babies, stupid dumb fat white bald babies, that was the first thought that came to my mind when i saw some of the people sending anti-vax emails at work
Bablu
Bablu
Post rating:
+
let me talk to them
shriekingviolet
shriekingviolet
Post rating:
+
it is 11pm and some falling down drunk guy is out with a broom brushing FUCK TRUDEAU into the snowbank on the opposite side of the street. it is not a busy street.
edit: he's not going to have enough space. plan ahe
ad
edit: he's not going to have enough space. plan ahe
ad
Edited by shriekingviolet ()
gay_swimmer
gay_swimmer
Post rating:
+
This might be an unpopular opinion but I think as long as we're going to have to live under technocrat fucks, Justin Trudeau is honestly as good as it gets. He has all the hilarious excesses and stupidities of a Macron or a Hilary Clinton but also can't stop winning elections.
Like, just saying that all unvaccinated people are categorically racist and misogynistic is a masterstroke. It will live on in the discourse of suburban hogs forever as his 'just watch me' moment. They will never get over it.
Like, just saying that all unvaccinated people are categorically racist and misogynistic is a masterstroke. It will live on in the discourse of suburban hogs forever as his 'just watch me' moment. They will never get over it.
wheatdevil
wheatdevil
Post rating:
~
gay_swimmer posted:This might be an unpopular opinion but I think as long as we're going to have to live under technocrat fucks, Justin Trudeau is honestly as good as it gets. He has all the hilarious excesses and stupidities of a Macron or a Hilary Clinton but also can't stop winning elections.
Like, just saying that all unvaccinated people are categorically racist and misogynistic is a masterstroke. It will live on in the discourse of suburban hogs forever as his 'just watch me' moment. They will never get over it.
I would genuinely become an obnoxious, chest-beating Trudeau defender if it in ANY way at all prevented the Liberal party from trying to do a double-switch with him and Chrystia "Grandpa's Little Angel" Freeland.
shriekingviolet
shriekingviolet
Post rating:
+
some of my rural relatives believe in a conspiracy theory that Trudeau is the bastard lovechild of Fidel Castro and thereby obviously a communist sleeper agent, which is deeply funny to me. meanwhile there's absolutely nothing fun about Freeland, just pure horror. so while I might personally despise the aristocratic prick I have to begrudgingly agree that it could easily be so much worse.
shriekingviolet
shriekingviolet
Post rating:
+
'berta news:
A guy I know works the hotel where they're holding the vote. The event room the party booked has a capacity of 2,000. They are totally fucked
A guy I know works the hotel where they're holding the vote. The event room the party booked has a capacity of 2,000. They are totally fucked
cars
cars
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating:
~
shriekingviolet posted:A guy I know works the hotel where they're holding the vote. The event room the party booked has a capacity of 2,000. They are totally fucked
sounds like another petit-bourgeois riot in the making