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Police on horseback against the truckers in Canada — 56 Comments

  1. You don’t understand, these, these “workers” were disturbing those who work or lobby on Parliament Hill. They had to temerity to bring bouncy castles and hot tubs into these rarified environs. As Michele Goldberg describe it in the NYT, “Imagine Occupy Wall Street, but set up by construction workers and military veterans with logistics training.”

    This type of insult could not be permitted to stand. And in the end, the police just want their middle class house and a pension. Thinking is not rewarded. But now they will have to think about trampling a grandma. Although what is likely scaring them is that she was reportedly an Indigenous tribal elder. Trudeau may be forced to denounce his merry band of thugs.

    These things take time to fester. I have to wonder how many are rethinking their media driven opinions of January 6th after seeing Canada. And Trudeau is trapped, if he relents, there is the real possibility of accountability.

  2. “In the usual irony…” But of course. There are plenty of people out there who would cheer the Cossacks charging with whip and saber. You can’t let these peasants get uppity. They have to know their place.

  3. I sympathize with the truckers as far as opposing the COVID power grab. And I believe that is exactly what COVID has been used, and maybe even designed for. I do wonder if they would have been better off by having a rolling protest , rather than blocking bridges. The whole “ protest” thing is tricky to begin with, whether you help or hurt your cause.
    Keep in mind however, once you bring in riot control troops and horses, things may look a little messy. When cops wrestle a basic criminal to the ground, It looks messy, perhaps especially to people who do not live very “physical” lives.
    The politicians and the media are to blame for this. I hate to see our side play the crazy game the other side plays and claim everything is “ excessive force”.

  4. Well, they want the truckers to go home so maybe they should do just that and then stay there. That has always been their strongest card to play.

  5. On last night’s program Tucker commented very astutely on the lack of any criticism from the illegitimate Harris/Biden regime of Trudeau’s terrifyingly tyrannical tactics. Just as our richest and most privileged elites look to the CCP as a model of governance, so too would it seem that our government must be at least tacitly endorsing the attack on freedom (construed as “racist’ or “right-wing”) north of the border. One wonders whether the phrase “sic semper tyrannis” will perhaps come to be more frequently uttered.

  6. There is a petition posted on Change.org requesting the Governor General of Canada to dissolve Parliament:

    https://www.change.org/p/her-excellency-the-right-honourable-mary-simon-the-governor-general-of-canada-the-people-of-canada-call-on-the-governor-general-to-dissolve-parliament

    About 1,800 Canadians have signed as of 3:30 p.m. (EST).

    And there is David Solway’s latest blast against JT: “It is now common knowledge that Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau, a former part-time high school teacher, snowboard instructor, and two-time university dropout—Trudeau studied environmental geography at McGill University and engineering at the Université de Montréal, failing to complete degrees in either faculty—is not and never was leadership material. If one studies the checkered history of Canada’s prime ministers from Sir John A. Macdonald to the present moment, one finds the inevitable gallery of eccentrics, short-lived tenants and corrupt operators among them, but none so feckless and inept, so morally impaired and puerile, in short, so unfit for office as the current occupant of 24 Sussex . . . ”

    Much more at the link: https://the-pipeline.org/who-is-justin-trudeau/

  7. The truckers need to go to a new plan – passive aggressive. Withdraw from Ottawa and then refuse to deliver anything to Ottawa. Supply chain disruption in spades.

  8. jon baker: Perhaps Boston Tea Partiers should’ve considered writing protest messages on the tea chests instead of tossing them in the harbor.

    I do like the idea of declaring Ottawa a trucking no-go zone, along with whatever else can be done to inconvenience its tyranny supporting inhabitants.

  9. I was impressed by the truckers’ discipline (physically and in messaging) and by their logistical and organizational sophistication. Not their first rodeo; and I suspect it won’t be their last. This was an early skirmish and IMHO they won convincingly. They retained (and gained) moral authority and they enjoy strategic initiative. They, not Trudeau, will decide what happens next. If they do “rolling demonstrations,” hindering but not blocking traffic, that will give the authorities fits. If they “work to rule” or launch a sick-out, the economic and moral effect could be considerable. What can Trudeau and his Stasi do in response? Freeze more bank accounts? Beat up more old ladies?

  10. jon baker,

    But there is brutality happening there. I say this as someone who has had to arrest people who were fighting me. I know what excessive violence looks like.

    There is video of the cops in Ottawa- though not necessarily Ottawa cops* -butt-stroking protesters with their rifles and beating them with batons while the protestors are already prostrate on the ground and of a reporter with Ezra Klein’s Rebel News being shot by riot ammunition (less-than-lethal…mostly) in the thigh. No one was resisting. The Ottawa PD tried to claim it was because one of the protestors attempted to grab a cop’s firearm and a scuffle ensued. Possible, I guess. But they also claim no tear gas was used, and there’s video of that too, as well as fogger deployment (looks like a small fire extinguisher) of pepper spray. In the case of the tear gas, they later said protesters threw it at them, which in videos, you can see, the protestors are throwing the canisters back at the cops who aren’t using the gas, “allegedly”.

    For what it’s worth, between the bank seizures and the arrests in Ottawa, I think the truckers and protesters are playing the game perfectly. In every video I’ve watched (and I’ve spent way, way too much time this week watching live streams) the protestors have not resisted any arrests and they have not fallen for any of the attempts to bait them into violence**.They’re keeping the moral high ground, allowing themselves to be cuffed (which has been the plan since day 1, if you watched any of the organizers’ press conferences), often kneeling first so they can be taken. As more videos leak that contradict the official OPD narrative, eyes will open. And protests are now sprouting up in more cities, especially in Toronto and Montreal, where they are now short police. Popping up like whack-a-mole. Trudeau’s Canada is showing the world they are rapidly losing their legitimacy.

    Who would trust a Canadian bank now? Who would trust the authorities? A disturbing number would. But less people every day.

    Buckle up.

    *Reports are, most cops enforcing the Emergency measures in Ottawa are bused in from Toronto and Montreal.

    **One tactic I’ve seen is that the police will launch tear gas or flash bangs behind protests, in an attempt to make the protesters charge INTO the cops, to provoke a more violent response.

  11. Could it be something besides propaganda making people think the protestors are just fascists, or the peaceful nature of Canadians? Maybe some people have been genuinely scared out of any support they might have given to the protest, because of the threat of repercussions. They don’t want their bank accounts frozen. They don’t want to come under surveillance.

    “And in the end, the police just want their middle class house and a pension.”

    I think that’s a lot of what’s going on. People think they can just obey their superiors for a few more months and get through this era of tyranny and have their careers and save for retirement and be happy. They think Covid’s almost over and they don’t want to rock the boat now.

  12. Viva Frei has cited video 9f glad bang grenades used against the demos, on YT.

    On Violence in Canada to force submission of truck anti-mandate protesters, opening topic of the day:

    CAN a comment on inflation causing the decline of the middle class, and intended and welcomed but the Ruling Class fit in on a thread on Canukistan PM Zoolander’s tyranny fit in here? Who’s good intentions against the middling sorts rebellion is still slaved to, nationally, according to surveys?

    Of course, I’m imputing American reaction to inflation as now relevant to Canuckville Times — yet I see comments on this post at ZH from the UK and Australia chiming in — is Canada immune to the Great Inflation destroying the middle classes?

    One imagines not. Consider that in inflation adjusted terms, US middle class incomes are declining FASTER than during the Great Recession a decade ago! And this will go on longer, likely:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/cost-living-us-rising-absolutely-absurd-levels

    Unseen before costs of living rises: $7 a gallon gas coming to CA. And in the last quarter of ’21, credit card debt rose at a higher rate never before seen, as middle classes stretch themselves out into debt (over $50 billion, $0.85 trillion in all).

    And US debt levels reached all time high record of $30 trillion.

    Klaus Schwabe and the WEF promised us that we would not own anything in the future (2030 mentioned), and we will be happy, they promised.

    It’s all coming true: serfs to the state’s plan for us, here in the US and elsewhere. Justin’s tyranny is just another stage where the middle class is to be beaten down into submission to the Ruling Class State’s “needs.”

    Inflation AGAIN as the cruelest tax. Yet again in the ZH column comments, someone quotes Lenin (and I studied Marxism-Leninism during the inflationary late ’70s under a card carrying Communist Physicist — therefore I ought to have learned this quote if he really said it — yes, I doubt the attribution): that communists would grind down the middles classes between the grindstones of inflation and taxes into submission, or some such.

    Whatever. This seems to be coming true.

    The comments in the ZH piece are dire, edgy, and take previously questionable prophecy seriously. Worse, more ominous times are coming.

    Trump wanted to see the middle classes rise and enjoy renewed vigor. The deep state and it’s World Government (transnational progressive) leaders do not.

    Obama promised 7 or $8 a gallon gas. Xi-Den is now delivering it.

    What next in horrors of middle class decline will be visited upon us?

    Several folks noted the idleness and indifference in their once rebust neighborhoods: free second day old sandwiches get tossed out because nobody even wants free food.

    We import the third world through open borders and are surprised when crime levels rise to their world levels.

    Soon the invading migrants will openly march to state Capitals demanding middle class home. (I’m sure Soros funded NGOs are preparing for just this BLM echo-ed intimidation tactic.)

    Crime is visiting Minnesota suburbs with carjackings by the dozen….

    Hellscape is coming, and between Zoolander’s demonstration of brute street tyranny and social media policing and “state” media censorship, how does any effective opposition get organized?

    Historian John Fonte some eleven years ago argued that if the Globalists win it will because the West has embraced the suicide of it’s own generative and protean values.

    Well… THAT’S what we’re witnessing…in real time. And in Canada, by Canadian’s, too.

    (My God. How do I hate being alive, here and now? Now that it’s no wonder.)

  13. “public opinion in Canada – according to polls, anyway – seems to be mainly against the truckers.” neo

    It’s the lack of public support for the truckers that leads me to think that they will not be successful. The irony here is it those people that support Trudeau and his government’s actions will come to deeply regret it. Too stupid or willfully blind to see where this must lead if the majority of Canadians don’t reject Trudeau and his party in the voting booth.

    “Well, they want the truckers to go home so maybe they should do just that and then stay there. That has always been their strongest card to play.” Griffin

    Not sure that’s as strong a play as it might seem to be. Most of the protesters have been vaccinated. Which indicates most have been going along till now. I think it likely that a lot of truckers did not protest and are thus unlikely to join a strike. Also replacements can be trained to operate the protester’s seized trucks.

  14. Geoffrey Britain @ 5:43: “…Too stupid or willfully blind to see where this must lead if the majority of Canadians don’t reject Trudeau and his party in the voting booth.”

    To “stupid or willfully blind” I would add “cowardly.” People have been ground down into a chronic depressive state, a grey anxious mood where every prospect has been dimmed or closed off. We can thank Wu Flu for that, and more precisely we can thank the authorities’ policies: the endless urgings to “hunker down, just a few more weeks” and surrender all initiative: “Follow the Science. Don’t challenge the Experts. The Experts will tell us what to do, and when to do it, so until the next ukase is issued, don’t make trouble. Patience. Patience. Patience.”

    At a certain point –and I submit we’ve passed it– “Patience” is indistinguishable from learned helplessness. So we should not be surprised by the lack of (reported; observed) reaction from the wider public. That said, people will not forget. And some may feel what’s been done to the demonstrators is a mortal insult directed at all Canadians.

  15. My long-standing belief is that Canada was settled by American colonists who could not accept the independence of the newly-created United States. They were loyal to the British Crown, so fled north into Canada. Their mind set was and has been more obedient to higher authority than the US tradition.

    So it is quite refreshing to see trans-Canadian truckers resist the arbitrariness of COVID testing, etc, as they reach each provincial border. No one is less likely to transmit any virus than someone who drives alone, and often sleeps in the truck too, feeding on takeouts.

    In the USA we appear to have lost the spirit of resistance to arbitrary and stupid authority (Biden’s unconstitutional mandates, and Fauci’s spouting of opinions, never one fact, come to mind).
    Pfizer wants to do a trial to inject the m-RNA which causes the body to make the spike protein (!) into children ages 6 months to 5 years. But they never get ill with COVID!
    What’s the point, besides transferring funds from the Treasury to Pfizer?

    I still see many people wearing the useless masks, especially if they’re employees and their company has issued a mask mandate. I am glad to read that a truck convoy is being organized, headed to D.C. in protest. But I fear the USA has become a nation in which sheep are the majority.

  16. The politicians and the media are to blame for this.

    Note the media are playing the flip side of the tune they crooned for the BLM/Antifa riots of 2020. In the US, real violence and arson and looting against urban infrastructure, and the media crooned ‘peaceful protests’, excoriated the police and fawned over the crude character of George Floyd.

    In Canada, NOT ONE bit of arson nor looting nor damage to buildings, a genuinely peaceful protest, yet the media harp on unevidenced misbehavior of unnamed truckers, fawn over the pretty-boy Justin Trudeau and his arrogation of dictatorial powers and bank confiscations, and the police use 1917 Cossack tactics to ride down unarmed citizens in the streets while media clucks approvingly.

    All power to the one who owns the TV cameras and the printing press.

  17. I’ve been wondering about the mentality of the police involved – not only of the police in Ottawa, but also the police in Hong Kong during the demonstrations there (and then the subsequent violence). There must be a very narrow set of blinders which allows them to ignore the fact the person they’re beating is unarmed and unprotected and unresisting. There must be a very narrow set of moral blinders which allows them to ignore the fact the person they’re beating is fighting to uphold what is touted to be a cherished value of the country (i.e., freedom).

    There were rumors in Hong Kong that the local police had to be augmented with people (perhaps police, perhaps soldiers) from the mainland. If true, the case there is more understandable since someone from the Chinese mainland would have no idea of the ideal being fought for and also the Hong Kongers, at the end, did resort to a pitiable violence (watch one try to throw a Molotov cocktail).

    Another analogous situation may be Tiananmen Square where troops had to be called from other provinces since the local soldiers didn’t seem to have the will to crush the students. Again, the troops who were called in were most likely ignorant of any ideals of freedom and may have believed they had to deal with a serious threat to civil order.

    The police in Canada who were sent to Ottawa have no such excuse, so I wonder how they justify what they do. Perhaps the media coverage has blinded them to what they’re actually opposing. Perhaps they’re only following orders.

  18. Owen,

    A certain percentage of cowards and sheep are always with us. They are the natural prey of the predators that exist in every time and place.

    Those who blame the protesters will reap the reward of every coward, “to die a thousand deaths” and the willfully blind sheep are certain to be sheared. While those who support Trudeau’s tyranny have declared themselves to be enemies of liberty.

    People unwilling to fight for their liberties lack the ability to keep them, nor are they deserving of those liberties. May their chains rest heavily upon their necks for what they are bequeathing to their children and to the generations to come.

  19. Les:

    I think in most cases their main motivation is to not lose their jobs.

    Also, many may take in the propaganda and believe it – that these people are dangerous, are Nazis, whatever bad things are said about them.

  20. My sense it that the polls are correct about most Canadians supporting the government. Most rebellions fail unless they gain the support of state actors. Canada is probably a lost cause.

  21. To hammer home the point… popular discontent only means something if there are elements of the existing elite superstructure of society willing to and desirous of stepping up to cajole, lead, and ultimately rule in the aftermath.

    An army of MAGA Hats or Truckers or Duck Dynasty characters can disrupt… massively so… but without backing by some segment of the existing elites are very unlikely to prevail.

  22. Do tell, oh sage of the Far East. Probably knows as much about Canadians as he knows about Americans. Arrogance and Ignorance,

  23. Shorn of the entertaining persiflage, Zaphod is IMO correct on the basic theory:
    “Successful revolutions tend to require disaffected segments of the Elites to flip sides *and* often also do most of the instigation and legwork.”

    Or, at least, the theory, as I learned it in graduate school and have seen in my later reading, mostly jibes with the Wikipedia article he cited.

    A few more random gleanings from the internet, while looking for a contrary theory, which I have not yet found, but I didn’t look very long.

    https://pressbooks.buffscreate.net/revolution/chapter/the-russian-revolution-history-and-theory/

    As Russian industrialization began to take place at the end of the nineteenth century, many elites decided to attain a modern education, which meant an introduction to many new socio-economic concepts greatly influenced by Western Europe (DeFronzo 2019, 242). These concepts and ideas would contribute to the development of new organizations and groups that would challenge the rule of Czar Nicholas II. Despite the consensus regarding the poor treatment of Russians at the hands of Czar Nicholas II and his government, no concrete agreement as to how the social injustices should be dealt with existed. Many of the elites involved in the movement towards revolution suggested that peasants required education about the benefits that revolution promised. Other revolutionary elites thought that violence and organized attacks against the Czar’s government would prove to be more effective. Neither of these efforts were successful in bringing about revolution. Peasants lacked receptiveness to elites trying to educate them, while the violence that groups like the “People’s Will” carried out only led to more brutal police repression and further alienation of citizens who did not condone the use of violence (DeFronzo 2019, 43).

    The first attempt at revolution in Russia came in 1905. This attempted revolution was a result of rising discontent regarding the Czar’s dictatorship. An increase in strikes, protests, riots, and assassinations of government officials, led to Czar Nicholas II deciding to enter into war against Japan. He believed that war would bring an end to these domestic tensions concerning wages and working conditions. However, Czar Nicholas’ choice to enter into war backfired as Japan defeated Russia, leading to Russian humiliation (DeFronzo 2019, 46-47). The intensification of the people’s discontent with the government led to even more demonstrations to voice their discontent. One peaceful protest in particular recognized as “Bloody Sunday” saw many unarmed protesters killed by Russian police, which sparked the attempt at revolution in 1905 (DeFronzo 2019, 46). The 1905 revolution did not succeed because there was a lack of coordination among the mobilized three revolutionaries. Most government forces remained loyal to the Czar’s government, and the movement lost the necessary support of the elites after Czar Nicholas II promised reform to the dictatorial style of government that existed (DeFronzo 2019, 47-48).

    …[WWI disastrous for Russia and the Czar]…

    In 1917, Russians carried out the February Revolution, which saw Czar Nicholas II abdicate his throne. The throne was then quickly taken over by leaders from Russia’s bourgeois capitalist class. [AF: I would call these members of the social/economic class elite, but not the nobility.] Not long after, the October Revolution of 1917 transferred power from the bourgeoisie to the Bolsheviks and Lenin (DeFronzo 2019, 49). The 1917 Russian Revolution was successful because of three factors. The people’s ability to coordinate and establish new four government structures. Two, Russia’s weakened state due to World War I, compounded by the support of sailors, soldiers, and other elite, also aided in victory. Third and finally, Czar Nicholas II’s refusal to provide the Russian people with other freedoms allowed a successful revolt (DeFronzo 2019, 84). Lenin called for the creation of a government consisting of soldiers, peasants, and workers. However, in the end, Lenin betrayed these values and became the first dictator of a communist state.

    The following is an overview, and doesn’t directly address the question, but has some interesting theoretical frameworks that have some overlap but not total agreement.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333578294_Theories_of_Revolution

    This is the one that I found most interesting and applicable.
    He could almost have been writing about Canada today.

    http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam032/99087457.pdf

    States, Ideologies, and Social Revolutions – A Comparative Analysis of Iran, Nicaragua, and the Phillipines – by Misagh Parsa

    The source site doesn’t allow copy-paste, and neither did the downloaded PDF, but it gives some credence to Zaphod’s assertions about opposition-elite support for successful rebellions against the ruling-elite.

    In particular, see page 6 (8 on the screen images; add 2 to each page number following) & page 8 (reveals a slight left-leaning orientation by the author, probably inescapable in academia, but not obtrusive) & page 9 for some rebuttals of the “ideology is everything” models & page 10 (describes his own model, which is directly applicable to Canada and the US and probably the UK if Johnson doesn’t get his act together soon) & details, which follow to page 21, which starts getting into the real meat of his analysis.

    Quoting another writer: “The major power of movement is exerted when opportunities are widening, elites are divided and realignments are occurring.”

    Parsa has 3 books on Amazon, and this one appears to have been developed from his short article (or the article is a summary of the book).
    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002HOQ5F6/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i2

    Between 1979 and 1986 Iran, Nicaragua, and the Philippines underwent dramatic political and social revolutions. This book examines the conditions and processes that gave rise to revolutions and their outcomes, through an in-depth analysis of economic and political developments in these countries. The book studies the background to revolution provided by state formation and development, economic intervention, the states’ vulnerabilities, and the social consequences of their development policies. Extensive primary data is used to analyze the impact of the collective actions and ideologies of the major social groups involved – students, clergy, workers, and capitalists – and how they affected the potential for a successful revolutionary outcome. Parsa challenges prevailing theories of social revolution and develops an alternative model that incorporates variables from a wide variety of perspectives. His book provides a valuable framework within which to understand the causes of revolutions, their mechanics and development, and their outcomes.

    I might even get a copy.

  24. Another interesting find for the topic of elite movements, revolutionary or otherwise.
    https://volokh.com/2011/10/31/the-fragmenting-of-the-new-class-elites-or-downward-mobility/

    by Kenneth Anderson

    Glenn Reynolds is correct in his weekend post to point to the social theory of the New Class as key to understanding the convulsions in the middle and upper middle class; I’ve written about it myself here at VC and in a 1990s law journal book review essay. The angst is partly income, of course – but it’s also in considerable part, as Glenn notes, “characterized as much by self-importance as by higher income, and is far more eager to keep the proles in their place than, say, [Anne] Applebaum’s small-town dentist. It’s thus not surprising that as its influence has grown, economic opportunity has increasingly been closed down by government barriers.”

    The problem the New Class faces at this point is the psychological and social self-perceptions of a status group that is alienated (as we marxists say) from traditional labor by its semi-privileged upbringing – and by the fact that it is actually, two distinct strands, a privileged one and a semi-privileged one. It is, for the moment, insistent not just on white-collar work as its birthright and unable to conceive of much else. It does not celebrate the dignity of labor; it conceived of itself as existing to regulate labor. So it has purified itself to the point that not just any white-collar work will do. It has to be, as Michelle Obama instructed people in what now has to be seen as another era, virtuous non-profit or government work. Those attitudes are changing, but only slowly; the university pipelines are still full of people who cannot imagine themselves in any other kind of work, unless it means working for Apple or Google.

    The New Class has always operated across the lines of public and private, however, the government-university-finance and technology capital sectors. It is not a theory of the government class versus the business class – as 1990s neoconservatives sometimes mistakenly imagined. As Lasch pointed out, it is the class that bridges and moves effortlessly between the two. As a theory of late capitalism (once imported from being an analysis of communist nomenkaltura) it offers itself as a theory of technocratic expertise first – but, if that spectacularly fails as it did in 2008, it falls back on a much more rudimentary claim of monopoly access to the levers of the economy. Which is to say, the right to bridge the private-public line, and rent out its access.

    …[An uncomplimentary discussion of the OWS movement – Occupy Wall Street]…

    In social theory, OWS is best understood not as a populist movement against the bankers, but instead as the breakdown of the New Class into its two increasingly disconnected parts. The upper tier, the bankers-government bankers-super credentialed elites. But also the lower tier, those who saw themselves entitled to a white collar job in the Virtue Industries of government and non-profits – the helping professions, the culture industry, the virtueocracies, the industries of therapeutic social control, as Christopher Lasch pointed out in his final book, The Revolt of the Elites.

    The asset bubble pops, but the upper tier New Class, having insulated itself and, as with subprime, having taken its cut upfront and passed the risk along, is still doing pretty well. It’s not populism versus the bankers so much as internecine warfare between two tiers of elites.

    I don’t think the lower tier of quasi-elites (bourgeois anti-capitalists?) is ready to join the truckers, but they might be willing to USE the truckers & other populist rebellions in their own interest, if they weren’t so abysmally stupid.

    They are also the “useful idiot” class that Lenin manipulated successfully in Russia, and then purged after they delivered the successful Revolution.

    * * *
    Here’s the Glenn Reynolds post cited by Anderson.
    https://instapundit.com/130648/

  25. @ Griffin > “This thread from Ezra Levant shows what some of the RCMP think and say when talking amongst themselves.
    Just awful.”

    That was truly frightening.
    I hate Twitter, but this should be read by everyone, and copied, because I’m sure Twitter is aching to suspend Ezra (and Viva Frei too, on YouTube) – don’t know how long they will remain uncancelled).

    1. This is the most scandalous story of the trucker rebellion.

    A WhatsApp chat group of Mounties boasting about the cruelty & violence they plan to use against peaceful protesters, and laughing at injuries done to civilians.

    This was leaked by the one honest cop still in there.

    I hope they don’t ever find out who it was.

    2. The first thing is the WhatsApp group itself, titled “Social Musical Ride 2022”. Those are the Mounties who specialize in ceremonial parades. But this time they were brought to Ottawa to drive riot horses into the crowds. Looks like about 25 to 50 people in this chat.

    Following the Tiananmen Square Rule – never use locals who might see their own grandma in the crowd.

    5. But then it gets darker, quickly. Cst. Nixon sees himself — and the rest of the RCMP — as fascist punishers. That’s their self-image; it’s who he thinks they are, and he says it, and he is not corrected. “Time for the protesters to hear our jackboots on the ground.”

    Tell me again who was carrying Nazi flags?
    Oh yeah, the ones who were applying the analogy to Trudeau, not themselves.

    7. Being kind or fair or professional is literally a joke to them. They’re all in on it — they fake being a professional force; they know that, to the public, they have to pretend that they are. But when it’s just them — 50 of them — they can be themselves.

    Jackbooted thugs.

    Looks like the rule of promotion by ideology instead of competence: do they not know that in today’s world nothing on a phone or the internet is private?

    9. Then Cst. @Quilley01 weighs in. He posts that same video — the riot horses charging indiscriminately into the crowd of civilians, stomping on an elderly lady. He posts the video marked “Police horses trample peaceful protestors in Ottawa”. And they all cheer!

    10. Andy Leclair says “Wow”. Scott Peever says, “That’s awesome”. Chris Russell says “We only think we’re living the dream”.
    And the thug Andrew Nixon writes, “That’s what we need to do!”

    They are all morally unfit to be police. They all must be suspended.

    But, of course, they won’t be.

    13. This was not an accident or a rogue mistake. It was the ideology, the mindset, the plan of these police. You can see it when they’re talking amongst themselves.

    But you can also see it in Ottawa’s dirty police chief, and his boss, Bill Blair, and his boss, Justin Trudeau.

    14. It’s one thing when disgusting journalists laugh at an old lady being knocked over by a riot horse. Journalists are the lowest of the low. But these police were doing that. They were celebrating their cruelty.

    But isn’t that what Justin Trudeau taught them to do?

    15. Trudeau called the truckers racist, misogynist, Nazis, intolerant, violent, dirty, “those people”, “intolerable”, etc.

    Trudeau dehumanized them. How could you fire these depraved Mounties, but not their leadership that shaped them this way?

    16. Nothing will come of this. Trudeau hand-picked his @CommrRCMPGRC
    to ensure that he is never investigated. This is him kissing her in public when she was supposed to be investigating his interference in the SNC-Lavalin prosecution:

    17. Normally the Media Party loves to rip apart the RCMP, the @CanadianForces, or any other “macho” bastion they haven’t yet completely woke-ified. But in this case, the cruelty is exactly what they want. They love the violence and bullying. If anything, they’ll get promotions.

    So, I think he’s telling us that Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties is no more, except possibly this one, soon to be ex-.

    I guess the RCMP is almost completely woke-ified.

    It’s the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, after all, not the Free Canadian People’s Police.

  26. Most of the entertaining persiflage has been shorn by our not entirely gracious hostess, leaving just the postscript which begins:

    “To hammer home the point..”

    Still, AesopFan says more about Elite Theory in a more palatable way to the readership here than I could manage. All good!

    Plug though for the Academic Agent Channel on YouTube. He got me interested in Pareto/Mosca/Michels and cured me of any romantic notions of mass action being all that’s required. MAGAdom and HK Protests enough context to sell me on the idea.

  27. Well, the trucker protest has been squashed; it’s over:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10530603/Riot-cops-clear-final-Freedom-Convoy-protesters-Trudeaus-Ottawa-doorstep.html

    And, I found this short article by Derek Hunter this morning to be particularly enlightening regarding not only Canada, but also NZ, and Oz. We may share a common culture and language, but we don’t share a common love of individual freedom. I think it’s telling those 3 countries never rebelled against Britain, but underwent, in their view, a more “civilized” separation.

    https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2022/02/20/canada-shows-why-its-called-american-exceptionalism-n2603533

  28. It was great while it lasted. But it couldn’t last for long. The bad guys won . . . again. And, sadly, I think they’re going to keep winning. In Canada, in America, everywhere.

  29. And, sadly, I think they’re going to keep winning. In Canada, in America, everywhere.

    Well, crawl into your closet and quit making a nuisance of yourself.

  30. “Well, crawl into your closet and quit making a nuisance of yourself.”

    So tell us your reason for such great optimism instead of responding with snark.

  31. I’m not optimistic about other countries. The US has a chance, but that is diminished by the large number of spineless, feckless members of the GOP. If the Republicans were more reliable to stand their ground, I might be more encouraged.

    OM, your link is encouraging; today is another day. I hope Viva Frei will be out again.

  32. Sometimes “not wanting to make a fuss” is the verbal expression of a gelatinous backbone.

  33. Neo (in response to Les): “I think in most cases their main motivation is to not lose their jobs.”

    I remember watching some videos a few years back about Desmond Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee. They had South African police telling why they attacked unarmed black South Africans in the townships. While it was true many of the officers stated that they believed they were restoring order; many stated that they were afraid of losing their pensions along with their jobs.

    I could see someone using more force than they otherwise would if threatened with losing their financial future – something they may have worked decades for only to have it taken away because they didn’t obey orders one day, even if they didn’t want to follow the orders as they believed the orders were wrong. It wouldn’t just be themselves that would be hurt, it was also their families ending up destitute. THAT is a strong motivator.

    As for Hong Kong, many of the police are now hired from mainland China. They are migrants to Hong Kong from the mainland and the only way that happens is if you have strong support for the CCP. Also, many mainlanders believe that Hong Kongers are arrogant and would have no problem with taking them down a peg or two. Especially given how so many of the leaders for Democracy in Hong Kong are so young the mainlander police would see them as disrespectful youngsters who need to be taught respect for their elders (and the CSP is in some sense their “elders”). Even with this attitude I could see some of the mainlander Police who might not like what they are ordered to do; but, if they disobey they could not only lose their job; but, end up back in mainland China without any job prospects. They would also be labelled as not being loyal to the party. Very strong motivators!

    Lastly, I have no doubt that people like Trudeau believe they know better than others, especially working class folks like truckers, and are appalled that such people would challenge them. So, the truckers need to be “taught respect for their betters.”

  34. Think we cannot become Canada?
    Today Slow Joe extended his National Emergency declaration.
    The Capitol is being fenced off again, in apparent prep for Corruptocrat Joe’s State of the Union speech March 2 (or is it 3?).

  35. The Capitol is being fenced off again, in apparent prep for Corruptocrat Joe’s State of the Union speech March 2 (or is it 3?).

    Personally I take this as a sign of weakness. It might work in Canada, but I don’t believe it will here.

    There is a reckoning coming in the midterm elections. The only question on my mind is how desperate the elites will become between now and then.

    Sarah Hoyt says, “Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.” She might be right. I’m not much for prepping, but this year is different.

  36. huxley:

    Weak, pathetic, and afraid. The Patriot Front clown show didn’t work trying to smear the March for Life and the Jan. 6 House of Clowns show isn’t working either. Desperate parties and people are still dangerous.

  37. Some Europeans are beginning to notice. Well, more specifically, East Europeans:
    “European Parliament member compares Trudeau to communist ‘dictator’;
    “European Parliament’s Cristian Terhe?, of Romania, blasted Trudeau as acting like a ‘tyrant'”—
    https://www.foxnews.com/world/canada-freedom-convoy-european-parliament-member-compares-trudeau-to-communist-dictator

    (And this guy’s a former Communist to boot… Talk about street cred? Or maybe he’s just had it with supposedly charismatic authoritarians…. Curious no matter how you look at it.)

  38. And some WEF pushback. (Revisited, as it’s been mentioned here over the past few days….)

    The WEf revelations, if they ever manage to get out to a wider audience, will likely be huge.
    (Looks like just one more “thing”—or coup?—to cover up massively and spin about hysterically…)
    “WEF ‘Infiltration’: Rogan Redpilled, Canadian MP Cut Off For Asking – Accused Of Spreading “Disinformation”
    https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/wef-infiltration-rogan-redpilled-canadian-mp-cut-asking-accused-spreading-disinformation
    Key grafs:
    ‘…Other [than Trudeau,] notable Young Global Leaders include: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda “this will never end” Ardern, French President Emmanuel Macron, and other high ranking officials from Germany, Finland, Greece, the Netherlands and Denmark. It might even explain Pete Buttigieg’s odd success-to-competence ratio….
    ‘Three years after Schwab bragged about having ‘penetrated cabinets’ of world governments, he wrote in a June 2020 publication titled Now is the time for a ‘great reset’ how the pandemic presented a “rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world to create a healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous future.”….’

  39. @Charles:

    The HKP are not ‘hired from Mainland China.’

    But they are increasingly recruited from young mainland immigrant HK residents. Men (none of this PC crap from me) who came to HK as boys who had already had 6 or 7 years of Mainland kindergarten and Primary School. You don’t need to be a Jesuit to own the child if you have him until ~10 or 12. Plus of course they grow up in their mainlander parents’ households in HK watching plenty of mainland media and many of them have to learn Cantonese on the fly just to get by –> bit more alienation and bile added to the mix. When they join the force, they’re all set to rock and roll.

    Ever since the 1984 Joint Declaration on the return of HK (1997) China has had the right to send 150 immigrants per *day* 365 days per year to HK. No vetting permitted by the HK Side. So 150 every day since the mid 1980s. The only time this has stopped has been due to Covid restrictions. Think on the numbers.

    The Chinese understand and have always understood Great Replacements even if ConservaCucks refuse to: see Tibet and Xinjiang. They act with great finesse. A good deal of the new arrivals are Fujianese — deliberately chosen because tend to be one of the most hyper-patriotic groups.

    The local people here have had to live for nearly 40 years now with new strange faces arriving daily and magically swanning into public housing in one of the most expensive real estate markets on the planets while locals born and bred here are reduced to living some of them in ‘Cage Homes’. They get to see the physiognomies of their beat policemen become recognisably more alien as time goes by… and a thousand other little signs which all add up to the message: ‘You People are History.’ They also get to watch their ‘Elites’ sell out in real time and prosper by doing so.. Never a pretty or encouraging sight.

    This Great Replacement was one of *the* major driving factors for what were sold to the West by lying Western media as pro-Democracy protests. There was of course a strong element of anti-local Quisling officials to the protests but the major underlying cause of anger and despair is this Great Replacement. Of which you have heard nothing because it is being done to you, too.

  40. I should add that those 150 immigrants per day are generally unskilled. The point is to bring in an army of government supporters who are reliant on low level government jobs and government housing.

    Obviously there are other avenues for the Mainland Elite and their children to take up residence in HK for business and other reasons. Generally they don’t want to live here permanently though as if you come from the right kind of background and have a Beijing or Shanghai residence permit, you’re almost certainly better off there in terms of living the good life.

    @Charles: Having said all that, I can assure you that there were plenty of HK Born police and even some remnant pre-97 recruit Western senior officers who went at quelling the protests with more than just gusto. It’s called Esprit de Corps, you know.

    And there will be ever increasingly more of it. Do you think a policexirson in the West today can be promoted without undergoing all kinds of pure straight out woke indoctrination? Guess who invented on the job political indoctrination? 🙂

  41. I can’t seem to fully shape my thoughts, but here goes and please bear with me.

    neo (and also charles):

    “I think in most cases their main motivation is to not lose their jobs.”

    It is a strong motivation indeed. (It’s the rationale I give for Jefferson not freeing his slaves). I wonder if any of the policed have followed the practices of a good bureaucrat and did the minimum – genteel shoves or small pushes instead of strong, hard ones (as with what happened to the Rebel News reporter). Perhaps many police do this and aren’t on tape because precisely nothing is happening and thus it’s not video worthy.

    What’s happening in Canada has brought about a deeper appreciation of the American Revolution. The Canadian truckers remind me of how the American colonists must have felt when they were still loyal to the British Crown. The leaders (the “elite”) in America, in order to strengthen their case and their tactics set up an infrastructure (such as the Committees of Correspondence). They also debated and argued which helped to shape and sharpen the principles involved. I haven’t read of anything similar in Canada, especially of the latter. Perhaps it’s all understood by saying the “Charter of RIghts”, but I think there needs to be a strong affirmation and confirmation of what it means in this situation. “Freedom” is such a vague concept by itself. Thomas Jefferson, where are you?

    The founding fathers (getting back to not losing your job) were extraordinary men because unlike the police I’ve been thinking of, they believed in and lived by their principles. One only has to read this last line from the Declaration of Independence:

    “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

    Our sacred Honor.

  42. @Les:

    I do. And thanks.

    It’s no paradise but it’s not half as bad as it’s made out to be. Virtually zero violent crime, no Drag Queen Story Hours for kindergarten kids. And there’s only one thing I could say which would get me cancelled. Pretty decent odds.

    Glass half full. Although nothing is certain in life. TW Strait fun times could conceivably harsh my mellow.

    Best wishes to you too!

  43. It all sounds pretty awful, this betrayal by the elites of their countries, traditions and principles (for a bit of measly pottage? Immense power? Total control? Riches?) but there may be—though this sounds a bit odd—hope. (Or maybe, “hope”….)
    “Central Banks Are Now Insolvent”
    https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/macleod-central-banks-are-now-insolvent

    IOW, elites getting bit on their backsides by their sheer stupidity. And cupidity…

  44. @ Art Deco in re Barry’s link “Central Banks Are Now Insolvent”
    “This is a nonsense statement.”

    Not really; the author is precise about that being a technicality based on the ratio of assets to liabilities on the books.
    The question he explores in quite some depth is how the central banks can get back into balance, and preferably excess assets rather than excess liabilities.

    Small commercial enterprises are technically insolvent temporarily when payments due are greater than expected receipts at that particular moment, but the discrepancies are regularly resolved through the play-out of the actual cash flow through the outgo/income cycle.
    [that’s a rough statement of my rudimentary knowledge of business economics]

    If I understand correctly, the article is about the same kind of thing on a bigger scale, including assets other than just cash-on-hand as in my example.
    I found it very interesting.

    Behind the battle to convince everyone that price inflation is not a lasting problem is the necessity to keep interest rates and bond yields suppressed. In the past, the interest rate cycle was entirely due to the expansion and contraction of commercial bank credit. But that was before central banks built up bond portfolios through quantitative easing.

    Not only does this expose them to the interest rate cycle, but they have not increased their capital base to keep pace with the expansion of their balance sheets. Hence the problem with rising interest rates and bond yields: on a mark-to-market basis the major central banks are insolvent with balance sheet liabilities now exceeding their assets.

    This article finds this condition true of the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve Board, the Bank of Japan, and the entire euro system. Other central banks are not examined.

    Doubtless this will be resolved in the short term by governments investing more equity in their central banks. But there is one major exception, which is the ECB and the euro system, with all its shareholders sinking into negative equity with the only minor exceptions of the Irish, Maltese, and Slovenian central banks.

    Consequently, with the interconnectedness of the global financial system, the ability of central banks to guarantee the survival of their own commercial banking networks has almost certainly ended due to a collapse of the euro system. The precedent is the failure of a prototype central bank in 1720, John Law’s Banque Royale. That experience allows us to see how this is likely to play out.

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