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Fats
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FEB 19, 05:59 PM
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| quote | Originally posted by MidEngineManiac:
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I don't agree with everything Elon says or does, but over the past few years he's really stepped up on things.
He sent Starlink internet to the truckers so the Government wouldn't be able to shut off communications on the horrible horrible connect four playing rioters.
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Patrick
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FEB 19, 06:07 PM
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| quote | Originally posted by MidEngineManiac:
Sorry, Adolph.
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You're apologizing to Hitler?  Nah, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Through thick and thin, stick with your team... right?
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Fats
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FEB 19, 06:50 PM
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williegoat
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FEB 19, 07:07 PM
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| quote | Originally posted by Fats:
The roads were opened. They left lanes through everywhere. The Police put up road blocks. Watch the videos. Even up at the front there are vehicles able to get by but there is no traffic because the police put up road blocks everywhere. As I pointed out before, none of the businesses in the area of the protest went without supplies. I'd bet that some had record sales.
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I thought that I read stories that described the roads, the Ambassador Bridge for example, as being blocked initially, and that the auto industry supply chain was interrupted. Any action that restricts the freedom of movement of a citizen, or the right of a citizen to engage in commerce, is counterproductive. One cannot promote freedom by restricting freedom.
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For those that disagree with the method. What would be acceptable?
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Much of what they did was acceptable. Any protest or demonstration that does not infringe on the rights of others, is acceptable. Political action, promoting candidates and legislation, disseminating information through print, broadcast and social media are all effective and acceptable. Hell, a trailer can be a huge traveling billboard. I know you have seen many things promoted on the backs of trailers.
If someone gets in my way, he is not my friend and I am not going to listen to anything he has to say.
I am in no way defending the acts of the government, what they did and continue to do is despicable, but to infringe on the rights of other, innocent citizens is exactly what the people are protesting against.
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Patrick
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FEB 19, 07:11 PM
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| quote | Originally posted by Fats:
commas matter
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Your point being...?
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gtjoe
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FEB 19, 07:41 PM
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| quote | Originally posted by williegoat:
I thought that I read stories that described the roads, the Ambassador Bridge for example, as being blocked initially, and that the auto industry supply chain was interrupted. |
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I read stories that they were all neonazi white supremacist's bigoted homophobic misogynistic terrorists.
I think the ambassador bridge was blocked for a bit. From what Ive seen from live streams at least some of that was the police and there are conflicting stories, and there wasnt nearly as much live coverage over there as the Ottawa protest.
also for what its worth these are separate protests with separate organizers and different people with different tactics. (at least thats what i gather from watching a few different interviews with the people that worked on organizing the Ottawa protest.
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Patrick
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FEB 19, 07:46 PM
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[This message has been edited by Patrick (edited 02-19-2022).]
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Patrick
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FEB 19, 08:08 PM
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Ottawa Protesters Cleared From Parliament Encampment
A central area of the protest that roiled Canada’s capital for three weeks was cleared of demonstrators.
By Natalie Kitroeff and Sarah Maslin Nir
Feb. 19, 2022
Updated 6:51 p.m. ET
OTTAWA — Police officers on Saturday cleared out the central area of a sprawling demonstration in Ottawa, moving from truck to truck and arresting protesters as they continued to subdue the occupation that has disrupted the Canadian capital for weeks.
Starting about 10 a.m., police advanced on trucks that had been parked on Wellington Street, the thoroughfare in front of the Parliament building, drawing guns on some vehicles and banging on doors as they searched for any people inside. They arrested several as other demonstrators shouted “Shame on you!” from nearby. In the heart of the main encampment on Saturday, the police pushed people back with batons and irritant spray and made more arrests.
One demonstrator, David Paisley, a HVAC technician who has spent the protest broadcasting updates from a fishing shack on the back of a flatbed truck known as “the shed,” described the moment an officer entered the vehicle to arrest him.
“He had a big military rifle, he pointed right at my chest, he yelled at me to get down, on the ground,” said Mr. Paisley, 33, who captured the moment of his arrest on a recorded livestream. “It was like a movie scene.”
A recording played in French and English, as the police advanced. “You must leave,” it said. “Anyone found in the zone will be arrested.”
The police operation appeared to be a final salvo in the government’s belated effort to break up the occupation. In recent weeks, the demonstrations, which began with truckers rallying against vaccine mandates, have attracted a variety of protesters airing grievances about pandemic restrictions, claims of government overreach and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s stewardship of the country.
By midmorning, police had cleared the demonstrators from what had been the occupation’s core, Wellington Street, and set up barricades. The Ottawa Police said that as of Saturday evening, 170 people had been arrested and that 46 vehicles had been removed. The police declined to discuss their tactics but in a tweet on Saturday, they asked the public to stop calling emergency phone lines “to express displeasure about the police action” to end the protest, noting that making unnecessary calls to 911 was a crime.
While significantly throttled, the protest was not completely disbanded. As police pushed demonstrators away from Parliament, some congregated on side streets while police warned that there were children in the crowd. “We are seeing young children being brought to the front of the police operation,” the Ottawa police said on Twitter. “This is dangerous and it is putting the children at risk.”
The protests had blocked traffic on major streets downtown, disrupted business and tormented residents with incessant honking. But they were by and large nonviolent. Organizers inflated bouncy castles in the street, and people brought small children and dogs. D.J.s played music from a flatbed truck turned into a stage. At one point people soaked in a hot tub erected in front of the Parliament building.
Demonstrators condemned the show of force against their occupation. “It’s horrific,” said Dagny Pawlak, a spokeswoman for the truckers, said in a text message on Saturday. “A dark moment in Canadian history.”
While the protesters grew more entrenched, criticism of the government’s failure to remove the occupation built across the country — and especially among many Ottawa residents.
Kathryn Moore, an administrator at the University of Ottawa, said she lived close enough to the downtown core to hear the horns of the truckers when the wind blew in her direction. “I lost my patience after Week 2,” she said.
Copycat protests, including the blockade of a vital international trade route between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, cost millions in lost revenue. And others, as far away as France and New Zealand, turned the world’s attention to the disruption in Ottawa, caused by a small, but vocal minority, in a country with one of the highest rates of vaccination in the world.
Efforts to rout the demonstrators began on Friday in a standoff where the police and protesters stood at loggerheads for more than five hours, a stalemate punctuated by the sudden appearance of a horse-mounted unit towering over the crowd. After warning that the shoving protesters were assaulting police, law enforcement then deployed the mounted officers, who charged parallel across the fault line between the two groups, trying to separate them. In the process, the animals knocked over some protesters and stepped on at least one person. The police said that they were “unaware” if anyone was injured in the fracas.
Throughout the course of the protest, public opinion has shown that pandemic fatigue is high here, in a country that has frequently rolled out stringent coronavirus restrictions. In opinion polls, some expressed sympathy with the truckers’ motivations, but not their methods. Still, as the horns blared incessantly — a trademark of the demonstration, even after a judge prohibited it — many Canadians, particularly locals, lost their tolerance for the occupiers.
Some of the convoy’s self-appointed leaders had right-wing organizing backgrounds, including Tamara Lich, a former member of a fringe party that advocated secession for Western provinces. Trump, QAnon and Confederate flags began to crop up in some of the trucker demonstrations across the country. Police officers arrested a group of people involved in a blockade in Alberta and seized a cache of weapons.
Voicing grievances. A demonstration by truck drivers protesting vaccine mandates has ballooned into a nationwide movement that has slowed the economy and brought life to a standstill in parts of Canada. Here’s what to know:
How it began. On Jan. 22, a convoy of truck drivers departed from British Columbia en route to Ottawa to protest a vaccine mandate imposed by the Canadian government on truckers entering the country from the United States.
Expanding reach. After the drivers arrived in Ottawa on Jan. 29, similar protests erupted in other Canadian cities and on the Ambassador Bridge, a vital junction for the automobile industry. Protesters soon expanded the scope of their demands, with some espousing a wide range of far-right views.
The impact. Drivers occupied strategic sites across Canada, including the Ambassador Bridge, which links Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit. As a result, automakers ran plants at reduced capacity due to delays created by the protests. Canadian law enforcement officials reclaimed and reopened the bridge on Feb. 13.
State of emergency. On Feb. 14, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took the rare step of declaring a national public order emergency aimed at stopping the protests. The order allows the police to seize trucks and other vehicles, and the government to ban blockades in designated areas.
The crackdown. On Feb. 17, police began arresting people involved in the demonstration in Ottawa, including Tamara Lich, one of the organizers. The morning after, hundreds of officers moved in on the protests, arresting several other participants and removing trucks.
On Monday, Mr. Trudeau declared a national public order emergency — the first such declaration in half a century — giving the government the power to seize trucks and other vehicles used in the protests, seal off the demonstration’s stronghold and freeze the bank accounts of anyone involved.
Invoking such sweeping new powers was “unnecessary, unjustifiable and unconstitutional,” said a representative of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which plans to sue the government over the move. Mr. Trudeau and members of his cabinet offered repeated assurance that the act would not be used to suspend “fundamental rights.”
In any case, many of the powers enabled on Monday by Mr. Trudeau had already been given to the police and the authorities under a state of emergency by the province of Ontario.
Among those who have been taken into custody were some of the most prominent leaders of the protests: Daniel Bulford, a former police officer; Ms. Lich, a right-wing activist; Pat King, a prominent online champion of the protests; and Chris Barber, a trucker and official spokesman of the movement.
On Friday, B.J. Dichter, a spokesman for the convoy, wrote on Twitter that it was time for protesters to leave, saying that the police had smashed the windows of one driver’s truck. But some of those who remained near the Parliament building said they had no plans to go home yet, even as law enforcement closed in.
“We can’t stop them,” said Mike Marsh, 48, nodding in the direction of the police. “All we can do is slow them down.”
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Patrick
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FEB 19, 08:18 PM
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How The Ottawa Anti-Vax Trucker Occupation Collapsed
by Paul McLeod
BuzzFeed News Reporter
OTTAWA — Police succeeded Saturday in taking back control of downtown Ottawa from the Freedom Convoy truckers, methodically forcing out the anti-vaccine mandate protesters who occupied the city for three weeks.
Police formed lines and pushed forward a few feet at a time starting in the morning, shoving back protesters and then towing the cars and trucks that clogged city streets. No one was killed or seriously injured, police said. Protesters tried desperately to “hold the line” and push police back. But sapped by defections and freezing cold temperatures, they were overwhelmed. Several protesters were pepper sprayed and 170 were arrested as of Saturday afternoon.
By midday Saturday, protest leaders had thrown up the white flag figuratively and literally — organizer Pat King told his followers, quite wrongly, that waving a white flag meant they could not be arrested under international law. Another organizer, Tom Marazzo, held a press conference where he accused the police of brutality and excessive force, but also said truckers were willingly leaving the city.
“The vast majority of the truckers do want to withdraw, but it is an individual choice for any trucker,” said Marazzo.
It’s a shockingly fast collapse for the one-of-a-kind protest that was for weeks defined by how immovable it seemed. Just days ago, the overwhelming sentiment among the convoy was that the protesters were winning, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would soon be forced out of office, and all vaccine mandates would end.
But police abandoned their hands-off approach and brought in reinforcements from across Ontario and Quebec, starting Thursday. By Friday, they formed lines to move through the streets of Ottawa, retaking territory bit by bit. Sights of police shattering truck windows convinced many demonstrators to leave while they still could.
Spencer Bautz, a trucker from Saskatchewan, said earlier in the week that the warnings of arrests were merely scare tactics. By Saturday morning, staring down an incoming line of armored police, he had made a different calculation. “I’m going to hold the line as absolutely long as I can,” he said. “But my truck’s better off outside the city and smashed and dragged into some hole.”
Those who left willingly are not necessarily going to escape legal action. Interim Ottawa police chief Steve Bell said police will spend months pursuing charges. “If you were involved in this protest we will actively look to identify you and follow up with financial sanctions and criminal charges, absolutely. This investigation will go on for months to come,” he said.
Private tow truck drivers played a key role in removing protest vehicles. When Trudeau declared a state of emergency Monday and granted the government sweeping new powers, one measure he specified was directing tow truck drivers to remove vehicles, for compensation. Protesters had been openly bragging about how tow truck companies did not want to work against the protests.
On Saturday, a line of tow trucks moved steadily into the downtown core, with identifying markers covered and drivers wearing yellow face masks to hide their identity.
Protesters reacted to the end of their encampment with a mix of anger and acceptance. There was widespread shock that police were cracking down, despite days of repeated warnings that the officers would take extraordinary action to end the occupation that has debilitated the city. Many accused the police of unnecessary violence. “We’ve only been peaceful for the last three weeks. This is ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous,” said Andrea, a protester who was walking the site with her pet pigeon Little Cloud on her shoulder.
Some were optimistic, saying that the demonstration has brought grassroots energy and widespread attention to their cause.
Cities around the world will look to analyze Ottawa’s successes and mistakes, as groups opposed to lockdowns and mandates look to emulate the Freedom Convoy. There have been copycat rallies in places like France, New Zealand, and Australia. In the United States, an American version of the convoy is planning to make its way to Washington, DC.
For many Ottawa residents, this moment couldn’t have come too soon. Exasperated locals had started physically pushing back, blocking convoy vehicles from entering the city.
As police work to lay charges against protesters, they will also come under strict scrutiny for how they handled the situation. Though this weekend’s operations were a clear success, many in Ottawa are demanding to know why hundreds of trucks were allowed into the downtown core to begin with. Some politicians are calling for the street in front of the parliament buildings to be permanently cut off to traffic.
Ottawa, a capital city of a million people, is largely populated by government workers and often described with adjectives like “sleepy.” Residents sometimes bristle at that characterization, but many were stunned to see the eyes of the world fixated on the dance parties, hot tub hangouts, and thousands of tons of chrome and steel clogging their downtown with apparent impunity.
Some residents lined up behind a new slogan: Make Ottawa Boring Again.
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RWDPLZ
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FEB 19, 08:28 PM
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