Leninist tactics. Create disorder Destroy the bourgeois state. Create revolution. A small organized faction can do a lot of damage. Radical Trumpublicans have become a revolutionary nihilist party destroying governments by manipulating the workers who feel oppressed and betrayed. Truckers have a hard job made worse by neoliberal deregulation. Thankfully the Teamsters see through this but are they as influential as they were before deregulation? The GOP is in an existential struggle between oligarchs and fascists on one side and traditional conservatives who are finally speaking out in fear as the clock strikes 11:59 pm.
Can you see them losing in a Republican primary or against a Democratic opponent? Don't overestimate the intelligence of their supporters, and don't ignore the motivation of their donors.
There is a tipping point. I don’t know where it is or when it will come, but Cruz kicked his constituents during last winter’s power outage and freeze. He supports the RNC platform. MOST IMPORTANTLY, don’t underestimate their voters and don’t give up.
Ol’ Flawriduh Cracker, Yep. We could lose, and despite most movies and Candide, bad guys do win and Noah wasn’t out for an afternoon cruise cause the weather was good.
I have a dear friend (college roommate, fellow JFK supporter, well educated, etc.) still living in Cruz’ home state. She tells me that Cruz is “Whip Smart”. Why? Forty years of propaganda and his degree from Harvard. Jon Margolis is correct. Do not assume because you see a few meatheads on T.V. that there are not intelligent folks who have been badly served by media and politicians willing to vote against their own interests as well.
When you suggest that people support reactionaries because the are stupid, people you exhibit the kind of easy elitism that has cost us heavily at the polls since 1980. I fall into the same trap sometimes, but I try to resist the temptation. If we want to win people over, and we should, we need to respect their opinions even as we reject them.
They are easily manipulated as the wealthy who are behind a lot of this stand back. The wealthy will be fine...for awhile....until climate change catches up with them, so they don't care. Here is Oregon we are hearing about something to happen in the middle of March and of course our old friend Timber Unity, financed from out of state, is partly behind this. I would not say that a lot of these folks are stupid, but my relatives who sometimes bleat all this nonsense, are very poorly educated and have scut jobs.
The majority of the people at 1/6 had jobs. Many were wealthy. The money to fund these groups isn’t coming in from small fish. There are big money donors keeping it going. But they are grifting from the small guys and someone is keeping most of the money. In the end the boots on the ground people and small uneducated donors will discover they have been seriously affected by their own actions. They’re not trying to shut down one company, they want the whole economy and government to collapse. They be just as affected by it. Cruz, Paul, Hawley, etc. have delusions that they will rise to the top and be rulers of the world. They don’t care how many die.
Where were the 'traditional conservatives' when the Senate refused to go along with the House's impeachment of the defeated former president? It is very difficult to grow a spine after the one you were born with melts.
I think the identity crisis, and any attendant struggle, is long over. I don't see these "traditional conservatives." I see two gutsy members of the party who have actually been willing to put the integrity of the country above their personal ambitions. With those notable exceptions, I don't see conservatives at all. I am an unrepentant liberal Democrat, never a doubt, but I remember a time when Republicans were human beings. These people are monsters.
My only concern is even if they decide to go toward sanity, that only gets them back to run of the mill God-awful. Still better than End Of Days nihilist destruction, I guess.
Most Fascists don't think of themselves as bad guys advocating an authoritarian form of government. They have been convinced that is what we have right now. They want to be the good guys, getting rid of it so they can have their freedoms back, which they believe an overly liberal democracy have taken away. That's why Fascists always wave their nation's flag and call themselves patriots. Once they get what they want, many of them are usually purged by those in charge, as occurred in Germany and the USSR.
Jack, who knew, right? The Neo Fascist poised to take power in 2024 and install a permanent oligarchy/theocracy to replace sweating masses Democracy have a collective vision.
Features include restoration of the “Mythic Past” when “separate but equal” seemed like a good way to deal with “uppity negroes.” As well business must be at last able to breathe the fresh air of Free Market Theology: No unions, regulation or tort liability, but plenty of legal power to for example bring the hammer down on anyone that suggest a company is price fixing, or gaining an unfair monopoly.
And you are right about when they take power if we are to give credence to the philosopher Karl Popper who among other things revolutionized how the methodology of scientific theory should be addressed.
He also wrote about “free speech and the role of tolerance” - (and this is really truncated to save reading time.) “if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant…. they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”
Popper saw first person the rise if Nazi Germany.
In any case, you can take it to the bank that suppression of argument will be among the first thing on the Fascist agenda. Maybe Florida’s “Woke Act” to prohibit teaching anything about our racist past that might hurt a ( I kid you not) White students feelings or make them fee guilt or shame will cost a teacher their job and likely civil law suit.
That crap has already been enshrined into law here in NH, as well as a 24 week abortion ban w/no exceptions except to save the life of the mother (the legislature is trying to enact a bill for men to sue their women to prevent the abortion long enough to force women to have to bear the child, even it the male is a rapist not yet charged or convicted. The Republican majority legislature and the governor are absolutely ignoring the will of voters and the general populace.
"Wreck the economy. Blame the Democrats." The Republicans have been doing it since 1876, against Grover Cleveland. They will keep doing it, in the immortal words of Michael Jordan referring to faking being fouled, "as long as it works."
More broadly: either Invent a problem where none existed (*cough* CRT *cough*) or take an existing problem (like, say, a pandemic) and do everything possible to make it worse.
This post is perfection (as are all of your posts). Thanks to you and Eric Boehlert, we have sources to focus on what the "real news" is as opposed to the agenda mainstream media want to propagate.
D & D GOP. Has a certain ring to it. I hope the GOP pays a price for what's happening. Auto plants are closing, and factory workers are being idled. It appears we're just seeing the start of these protests, which if they spread to major metro areas of the U.S. will harm much more than auto production.
Naturally, the Republicans will at some point blame Biden for any damage to the economy. But workers will know the truth.
I so appreciate your work in putting together these columns, especially for including references to specific information. It is seriously wonderful. We can only wish our TV "journalists" would do the same, i.e. prepare a broadcast segment and post the sources publicly on a website. I believe that would quickly reveal the fabulists among them, whatever their political persuasion.
I absolutley agree. I was thinking this as I was reading it. I am beyond gratefully for Heather. Why is it that she is able to give facts so clearly and concisely and "journalists" aren't or can't?
I’m so grateful for her as well, because the way she writes seems like it takes out the impact of “empathic anguish” and lets me process the information.
It occurred to me recently that increasingly we seem to have authors rather than journalists working for the press. I have no problem with journalists writing books but not at the expense of the factual, timely news they should be reporting. I find myself turning to HCR and other historians more and more for fact-based information on current events. Thank god for them and their willingness to step up when so greatly needed. What they’re doing is difficult on several levels.
Journalists have deadlines, editors, and their families. Most do not have a Phd nor decades of teaching and research experience. There are incredible journalist out there. Find one u like and stick with them.
There are some excellent journalists, and I believe most of them are local. I subscribe to the Cincinnati Business Courier and an ongoing story for the past 2 years are has been - wait for it - Hamilton County GOP In Disarray. One reporter has lambasted Republicans for how they've handled the state and federal maps.
There are journalists, reporters, columnists, broadcasters. Heather is able to take pieces from each of these news conveyors and produce something daily that is more powerful than the the sources. While working.
I thought you made it perfectly clear. I'm sure there are complex explanations for even the best journalists to bend and create the news, but the depressingly obvious one in this culture is money. Anxiety-producing headlines sell papers.
Part of it is that they rarely get to go in depth and must squeeze a lot in a small time segment. They also need ratings. Their owners are suspect as well. We never watch channel two in Portland because it belongs to Sinclair. Our local rag is Gannett. It has ceased to be much of a newspaper and Salem is a capital city.
And part of it is that they choose to cover scandal and trivia. It wouldn't take long to mention the facts that Heather has in her first paragraph--I bet they would if it were a Republican administration. Sinclair is second to Fox in the "worst" category.
I would like to change just one word in your last sentence, Gailee (lovely name, by the way): ‘Why is it that she is able to give facts so clearly and concisely and "journalists" aren't or [won't]?’
Most TV news shows are entertainment, not journalism. The idea of a 24 hour news channel is absurd. Fox, CNN, MSNBC - all committed to keeping eyeballs glued to the screen, not keeping viewers informed. The only legitimate news show on TV is the PBS News Hour.
I agree. She has given airtime to some utter nonsense during interviews when hard questions were in order. And they have joined the ‘inflation bandwagon’ without giving the recovery its full due to date. Cmon, PBS.
She wants to be “balanced”, I can’t watch her anymore, something is either true or it’s not, she never call’s out people that are lying to her face, it’s snippet news anyhow, if you rely on the NH for your news, you will be woefully uninformed.
No, I surely don't completely rely on her for news. And I am deeply grateful for having Heather's thoughtful writing, including the links to sources. How about you? Where do you get your news?
What? What? Ouch! 80 isn’t the reason to blame Judy Woodruff for a bias. 80 could be a reason to see more clearly. To compare and contrast and analyze and connect. Let’s move beyond age and be specific in criticism or praise. Please. I’m 75.
All I did was to report her her age, which, apparently is on 76. I find it interesting that so many of you have drawn conclusions of that little sentence.
What is your point, Richard? Could it be ageism? 'prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of a person's age.' "ageism in recruitment is an increasing problem"
Absolutely not, Fern. I was just writing what I think I heard or read on NPR or PBS that Judy W. had just turned 80. Somebody else later wrote that Judy was born in 1946, which would actually make her 76. BTW, on April 3 this year, I shall turn 78, having been born in 1944. I was just thinking how great it was that Judy is still doing a good job and hasn't been kicked off because of her age.
My point was that Judy Woodruff has turned 80, and that is remarkable for someone to be still doing a good job broadcasting. We you taking offense at my writing that she is 80. Hell, I'll be 78 on April 3 this year. I think it's great for some of us older folks to be productive. Apparently she is takin Goerthe's advice "Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
Thanks, Fern. Here's something else from Goethe: "Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid." We had snow overnight here in York, PA. Maybe 2 inches. Winter has returned. Enjoy this Sunday and Valentines Day tomorrow. May we all continue in peace.
Yes. BBC, al Jeezera, and the Guardian are my go to along with a few over here in Europe. I dropped WoPo and am dropping NYT because they are just not what they once were. The Guardian in the States is different, but I subscribe. I miss KCRW in LA. Today on a Twitter feed I read many Americans angry with journalists and media not making Trumps taking national security material headline news.
And even the legit registers need shows are answerable for libel and falsehood, though they are chatty and sensational. Unlike FOX Entertainment which is not registered as a news network and is rarely held accountable for their frequent false statements.
The younger gal is Nermeen Sheik(Not correct spelling). As one of our readers here wrote yesterday a quote by Amy at a meeting in 2008: "What this nation needs is a Fourth Estate, not a 'for the state.' " Was that you, Liz? I watch Democracy Now! (please don't forget the exclamation point!) every day to see and listen to real people being interviewed. Democracy Now! is far more important than any of the corporate media. Amy, Juan, and Nermeen beat the crap out of those talking heads. That is real journalism, folks, and don't you forget it. Watch Democracy Now! M - F online at www.democracynow.org, and spread the word about these journalists who are the real Fourth Estate!
Yes, Liz, I did see her chase the creep! BTW, Democracy Now! recently celebrated their twenty-fifth anniversary. Another show I like is Thom Hartmann. He broadcasts from Noon to 3:00 p.m., ET, M - F. I get his show on Facebook. the show is also on Free Speech TV. He gives lost of good interviews with people like Ro Khana, Tom Pokantz, economist Richard D. Wolff, etc. Thom's show is a call-in and is based in Portsland, Oregon.
Also, I would think that Boston would carry Democracy Now!, which is based in NYC.
Democracy Now for many years supported Glen Greenwald and Julian Assange - two “journalists” who were decidedly pro-Putin and who helped Trump get elected. It’s hard for me to trust them now.
Neither Greenwald nor Assange are pro-Putin. The USA government hates them because they are real Fourth Estate journalists who have exposed real truths about bad things our government had done.
At one time, back before 2014, Greenwald and Assange might have resembled real journalists. From 2015 onward they both became partisan tools (witting or unwitting is unclear) of Putin, attacking various democrats and helping Trump get elected. In 2016 Assange received a trove of Clinton’s emails from Russian intelligence, and timed their release to help Trump’s campaign (coordinating with Roger Stone). Greenwald began attacking Clinton during the 2016 campaign with suspect material supplied to him by Russian intelligence in 2015 and 2016. Greenwald has been let go by every media outlet he once worked for, for sloppy work. Nowadays he appears regularly on Tucker Carlson’s (72 times as of late 2021) and Laura Ingraham’s (40 times) shows, on Fox News. That’s Fox News, the home of your “real Fourth Estate journalists”. Greenwald’s latest “journalistic” efforts have been to assist Trump in “exposing the real truth” about Biden’s “Ukraine corruption”. Assange is a fraud, and Greenwald is a partisan hack. Neither has any credibility, today.
Also, the Canadian government has lost control of Ottawa to the extreme right that infiltrated the "Freedom Convoy." Here's a substack blog with all the info:
This one you’re reading now is also where I will recount the strangest, most concerning incident I experienced in Ottawa — one that explains why I think the police have been so reluctant to act.
They know what they're up against, to be frank. Most of us don't. And at least one person is trying to tell us.
The chief is very political. I say that with no disrespect. Becoming the chief of a major police force isn't something that happens because you catch the most bad guys. It happens because you're good at working your way up through the power structures of a very particular institution. Sloly talks like a politician. But if you listen closely, and if you follow along across his briefings, you start to see a theme. From the moment he first mentioned that there might not be a policing solution to this protest, and hinted that we need the armed forces, he's been signalling to the public that Ottawa, as a city, has lost control of itself. That's a blunt description, but as I noted in a Twitter thread after a pretty remarkably stark Ottawa Police Services Board meeting on the weekend, Sloly was clear: the city needs to be rescued. It has lost control, it is outnumbered, and it cannot fix this problem with the resources on hand.
Also, there’s this: there's another element of the protest that's nothing at all like a festival.
You may have heard reports of a secondary encampment that is well removed from the main protest sites around Parliament Hill. I certainly had. It has been described in different reports as either a logistics area or some kind of staging ground for protesters. It is a parking lot outside of a baseball diamond, RCGT Park, right next to a large Marriott hotel, and though not far from Parliament, it’s well removed from the main sites.
This site, for lack of a better term, has been fortified. There are many trucks parked in the parking lot, but some of them have been arranged to form outer walls. These walls have been augmented with wooden sawhorses and what looked to me to be stacked pallets of some kind. There was an entrance with a tent marked Reception (see photo, below). I wish I could give you a better description of the site, or tell you what was inside, but as soon as I began to approach it on foot, someone very quickly fell into step behind me. A series of others, four or five, met me before I made it to the reception tent. We chatted briefly, and I got the distinct impression that it would be way, way better for me to be somewhere else. I left.
Later that day, by chance, I found out that a friend of mine had been in town and had decided to go check it out for herself. She told me that she was able to get inside by slipping in with a larger group. Once she started taking pictures, she immediately began to be followed, and she was tailed until she left shortly thereafter. She wasn’t harmed or threatened, and agreed with my description of the residents as organized, polite, and very clear in their desire for you to leave. She had a much better view of the entire area, and reports that the perimeter was pretty secure. Where it wasn't, she said, there were small groups standing on guard. Her impression matched my own entirely: this group is disciplined, organized and on alert for outsiders.
Still, each call I made went similarly: the police are very much aware of the site, and they are very worried about the presence of a hard-right-wing, organized faction that isn't there to protest mandates and vaccine passports, but to directly create conflict with the government. This hard-right element probably includes some non-Canadians, here for the party. The broader complaints of the protesters are a cover for the group seeking open conflict. Most of the convoy protesters aren’t part of this smaller, nastier group, nor linked to it in any overt way. Many of them will think any concern about it at all is just some MSM lamestream media conspiracy.
My government and security sources do not agree. What’s happening in Ottawa, they were clear, is two separate events happening in tandem: there is a broadly non-violent (to date) group of Canadians with assorted COVID-related gripes, ranging from the somewhat justified to totally frickin’ insane. But that larger group, which has knocked Ottawa and too many of our leaders into what my colleague Jen Gerson so perfectly described as “stun-fucked stasis,” is now providing a kind of (mostly) unwitting cover to a cadre of seasoned street brawlers whose primary goal is to further erode the legitimacy of the state — not just the city of Ottawa, or Ontario or Canada, but of democracies generally.
Some of them are ideologues, others just grifters, but they’re real, and they’re in Ottawa. Maybe not in that parking lot. I certainly didn’t get the chance to take any names. But local officials know they’re out and about, and are worried that any move they make will trigger an incident that can easily result in dead cops, dead truckers and delighted far-right agitators.
If that all sounds alarmist, I felt that way too. So I contacted three other sources, including one who’s superbly well placed, and ran this scenario by them. Two agreed. One suggested I’m actually being too optimistic.
So yeah. The bouncy castles and the Fuck Trudeau signs aren’t really the story here. And if you’re wondering why no one wants to act, it’s because they’re afraid of what they’ll be unleashing.
Thank you, TC. Matt Gurney’s reporting has cleared up a few things. And made Fox News support even more egregious. Their support of the truckers sounds like a cover for the odd compound set up like a right wing headquarters in that parking lot. That is what caught my attention. Like it’s an alternate “government” site planning the coup d’etat.
I have been reading everything I can get my hands on. This and his previous article are the best description of this past week I have seen. The first week, when the bullying, Confederate and Nazi flag waving etc. was not good for their image so has been muted.
Protesters at Couts Sweetwater posted on Twitter asking the Trumps to come and unite Canada and USA.
Of course the Republican Jesus Christians on both sides of the border are solidly on side.
Canadian government is taking measured steps. “Injunction granted to prevent protesters from blocking Ambassador Bridge” “Protesters blocking one of Canada’s busiest border crossings were dealt a one-two punch Friday, as a court granted an injunction banning their blockade and Ontario’s premier declared a state of emergency that would subject them to major fines.”
It certainly appears that chaos reigns, which is a cause for terror in many? Not sure the legal definition of terror, but many people have fled their homes to get away from it.
With that said though, this blockaded bridge is being dealt with nothing like another one was by the Canadian government. Is the difference 30 years of evolution or is it white nationalism? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_Crisis
However, since Canadian towing companies are refusing to move the trucks it sounds like Michigan governor Whitmer has said she will get them moved. The auto industry is being harmed and pitting the Teamsters against the UAW is not going to be pretty if it comes to that.
Interesting post. You mentioned the Police Chief being political, as it is a necessary companion to ambition. I, too, mean this with no disrespect. I wonder if also part of his signaling that the police have lost control of this situation (or at least must proceed with tigger-hair caution) is because like in the US, the police are divided themselves ideologically. This is what for me makes our current moment so vulnerable to violence. We have had over twenty years of failing war, not to mention our debacle in Viet Nam. All those military trained, PTSD effected, disillusioned former soldiers seem to fill the ranks of law enforcement. A culture of Might-Makes-Right seems to be the pernicious undercurrent to these institutions. “Protect and Serve” seems like a joke. The Canadian Police Chief and the Political Leadership in Ottawa seem to know how close they are to lighting a match in a fireworks factory. And that fireworks factory seems to span the globe right now.
My wonder is how many law enforcement officers will flip and side with the rabble-rousers? And isn’t that the defining reason we are in this more close-to-home violence situation? Law Enforcement knows if they make their ranks chose a side it may not be for Democracy? There are many who want autocracy, especially because they believe autocracy will favor their pawn-efforts, even though that is not the way history usually works out. But they may be willing to blow up the system, because why not? The disciplined group near the Marriot Hotel by Parliament seem to be the group to watch.
'The authorities have stopped 500 vehicles outside the French capital ahead of an anti-mandate protest'
'French police say they intercepted around 500 vehicles trying to enter Paris as part of an anti-mandate 'Freedom Convoy' protest on Saturday.'
'Several groups of protesters who took their cue from the Canadian truckers were stopped at three checkpoints outside the French capital. The authorities issued almost 300 tickets to the participants.'
'Ahead of the planned protest, police deployed thousands of officers, water cannons, and, for the first time since the Yellow Vest protests in late 2018, armored personnel carriers. An order was issued prohibiting the protests in Paris over fears that the demonstration could result in "public order disturbances." Courts sided with the authorities, rejecting two appeals against the ban.'
'Paris Police Chief Didier Lallement said the authorities had dozens of tow trucks at their disposal that would help "put an end to any blockage." Speaking to France 2 TV on Friday, Prime Minister Jean Castex warned that the French government would be "very firm" should the protesters "block traffic or if they try to block the capital." Castex added that while the "right to demonstrate and to have an opinion are a constitutionally guaranteed right in our republic and in our democracy," that right does not apply to blocking traffic.'
Sewage samples taken as the convoy crossed Canada indicates that is not necessary as they are bringing it with them. The next few weeks should see a major outbreak in Ottawa.
IMHO, USA has been similarly paralyzed for some time for the same reason; “no one wants to act, it’s because they’re afraid of what they’ll be unleashing.”
I've always wondered about Canadians and their possible affinity for right wing ideology. When I lived at Canyon Lake, a Canadian doctor and his wife ran a "clinic" and a small RV park down the hill from us. They called it a "clinic" but the only time I went there (to get a tetanus shot) I was told that no one there knew how to give shots. The RV park was inhabited by only Canadians, who did not associate with anyone in our subdivision. They were called "winter Texans" or "snowbirds" because they came and stayed during the winter and then went back to Canada during the summer. I later met some of these "snowbirds" at Gruene Dance Hall (adjacent to New Braunfels) where they would come in droves to hear a certain Country Western singer who played songs they all knew by heart and could dance the two-step with their mates. New Braunfels is home to one of the most vile white supremacist leaders and his minions - his last name is Ceh and he led the cavalry called the "Trump Train" that tried to ambush the Biden/Harris' campaign bus on IH35 before the election. New Braunfels, as all know, was settled by Germans and is still VERY much a German town with enough KKK members to cause it to be on the radar of the FBI. So, why would "winter Texans" settle in this town every single winter? I always wondered what drew them.
Canada has its share of extreme right wingers. This "Freedom Caravan" is about bringing them mainstream and allowing more of them out of the woodwork. It is the next 10 years that worry me, especially if USA goes Republican
💩-tin also wants jurisdiction & the leverage that comes with that pipeline. I find it interesting that there is indications if Russian escalation as things are heating up with trump and the investigation into the coop, & the organization/financing of the convoy blockage. Perhaps 💩-tin wants the US to fight a war on two fronts?
He wants a lot of things he can’t have so like many spoiled brat bullies he will probably go to war to get them—I don’t think he cares at all about all the people that will get killed. He’s had that great KGB training.
The goal is to break nato and the EU. Russia will never be part of the EU as long as it’s non democratic and a menace. Putin gets less pressure at home “if more of the world, especially the US is more like Russia.”
Destabilize and break the UK from the EU. Try the same with the US. So that they are both unwilling to lead and organize resistance to a Ukrainian invasion. Do it all via Facebook and Twitter so the other side doesn’t realize what has and is happening.
Ted, I’m no tech expert, but IMHO the spread of propaganda is far worse than the Covid pandemic in terms of lives that will be lost as our Earth burns.
“Unlike the past two election cycles, when Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others worked with federal, state and local election officials to take down election-related misinformation, it’s unclear if the new apps and sites would take similar measures.
Gettr and Rumble did not respond to questions by publication time.
It’s also unclear if election officials will have any leverage in trying to knock down misinformation on the new platforms. In recent election cycles, officials from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Election Assistance Commission, as well as state elections officials, actively pushed back on false claims percolating on social media platforms.” https://rollcall.com/2022/01/18/rise-of-right-wing-apps-seen-worsening-midterm-disinformation/
He is also testing NATO's resolve to move against him; Putin is praying for an "incident" that will allow him to (ostensibly) invade Ukraine...however he is also ensuring, via his subversives planted on the Ukraine side of the border, to manufacture a staged "incident", in case a real "provocation" doesn't occur.
The first invasion, the Russians concocted a false story of Ukrainian soldiers crucifying a Russian speaking boy in a border town. So of course the Russians had to “rescue” that town.
Thank you for the link. I’m now a subscriber. This article is a good companion to historical info that we rely on from HCR’s letters and brilliance. My grandparents left-escaped- Kiev in 1909, Russian Jews who lived with fear, hate and tyranny for generations. Some other relatives stayed and came in the 1980s but while they waited years for visas they were prohibited from working in their fields of science and medicine. They were never able to reconnect to their past training and education. But their children live in America now. I’m grateful for my privilege and their sacrifice. And sad that people are still escaping dictators and trauma in this modern age. We absolutely see the link between the TFG and the history of Putin’s rise to power. Or is it Putin and TFG’s rise to power? What ignorant and dangerous followers he has gathered on his path to power as a USA President and now a has been supported by assorted alternative press and political hacks and despots. Of course the old adage, “If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention” applies but…
Thank you for becoming a member. Your post is so important. My daughter in law is from Iraq and her sister in law was a dentist back in Iraq. She first had to learn Engish before going to medical school here. I have friends who have the same issues. It should be easier for those who come with needed skills to be able to use those skills here more easily.
Orange County Scientology lawyer Leigh Dundas, who was one of the main organizers of anti-masking and anti-vaccination protests in the county this past year, is now working to bring the Canadian "Freedom Convoy" protest to the US. As with all Scientologists, she's crazy, but in her case she's also extremely dangerous.
Now, Dundas is leading a different kind of charge: the effort to bring Canada’s anti-vax trucker protests to the United States.
Politico first reported the involvement of Dundas and her non-profit, Freedom Fighter Nation, on Wednesday. TPM reviewed Telegram chats focused on organizing a U.S. convoy in which organizers referred to Dundas and her nonprofit as part of the movement’s leadership, saying that they are playing a role in planning upcoming rallies.
Dundas claimed in a little-noticed interview published on far-right video sharing network Rumble that she first got involved several weeks ago when a group of Canadian truckers invited her to help with their protest.
“We started working with them to identify the strategic border crossings and how we could support them from the United States side and also what this looked like,” Dundas said in the video, published Jan. 31.
Now, she and others are working to ignite a similar series of anti-vax protests in the U.S., starting with a rally planned for California’s Coachella Valley in early March that’s been promoted across several of the main social media profiles for the would-be American convoy.
Over the past two years, Dundas’ appearances illustrate the nexus of right-wing activism around anti-COVID measures, Jan. 6, and, now, the movement of truckers aimed at snarling up supply chains and bringing an end to vaccine requirements. It’s a jumble of different threads with Dundas popping up in each, promoting both conspiracy theories and her own involvement in organizing around them.
In particular, Dundas has had a Forrest Gump-like habit of popping up at COVID-related imbroglios. First in Orange County, and most recently on Capitol Hill.
When the pandemic first began, Dundas was one of a group that succeeded in expelling a local Orange County official from office over COVID mandates that, TPM pointed out at the time, were non-existent.
That’s also when Tony Ortega, a former Village Voice editor-in-chief and current independent journalist who covers Scientology, first noticed Dundas.
He cottoned on to Dundas’ connections to scientology, specifically as an attorney for what he described as a front group operated by a scientologist chiropractor. Then, in January 2021, he was surprised to receive a tip placing her outside the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“You stand the hell up,” Dundas said in a video of a speech she gave in D.C. around the time of the insurrection, posted to YouTube by Ortega. “Because you are far better off living a life on your feet and being prepared to die on your feet than living a life on your damned knees.”
Ortega told TPM that that was Dundas’s last U.S. appearance for a while. Social media posts reviewed by TPM place her in Mexico not long after.
“Right after that event, she went right down to Mexico. It seemed like she knew she stepped over the line,” Ortega added. “There’s an enclave being built by scientologists down there.”
Dundas has since returned to the U.S. She appeared at an October 2021 conference in Salt Lake City devoted to COVID denial, the Big Lie, and other issues that loom large in the QAnon universe.
In the Jan. 31 Rumble video, Dundas discussed an earlier plan for mass, anti-vax protests: a so-called “National Walkout” to be held in November 2021, meant as a general strike against employers with vaccine mandates.
That effort did not catch on. It did lead to some notoriety, after a car hit five people trying to control a protest that Dundas organized on the Golden Gate bridge in support of the walkout.
Later in the Jan. 31 Rumble video, Dundas said that the Canadian truckers reached out to her after hearing about her role in the walkout.
She likened the truckers’ movement to a 2014 episode in Thailand, where, as she told it, farmers used their equipment to bring a “coup d’etat” to an end.
“For whatever reason, god had me on the ground in February 2014 when the Thailand farmers did a similar move — they blockaded or threatened to blockade and make an island of Bangkok International Airport, as a way to bring the coup to an end,” she said. “They were having a coup d’etat. There was no definitive winner coming out of it.”
(The story seems to conflate events in 2014 — a planned February farmers protest that was subsequently called off, and the successful May military coup. Dundas has said she was in Thailand working on anti-human trafficking issues.)
Dundas added that it ended when “much like the Canada truck drivers,” Thai farmers drove large trucks to block off Bangkok’s main international airport.
“That was it — no more coup,” she said. “I had been waiting for anybody in a first-world country to do that over the past couple years as things got more tyrannical, and really since March 2020.”
The number of loonies with money is legion. Bruce Springsteen said it best way back there “When you let that genie out of the bottle - bigotry - racism - intolerance - they don’t go back in the bottle that easily, if they go back in at all. Whether it’s a rise in hate crimes, people feeling they have license to speak and behave in ways that were previously considered un-American and are un-American. That’s what he’s appealing to. My fears are that those things find a place in ordinary, civil society.” Which will be neither ordinary or civil from that point on.
They are not loonies. Power grabbing puppet masters around the world are bringing chaos to dominate with a very right wing agenda. Next time the US tries to invade a country let’s remember what they did in Chile in 1972: The USA fed a trucker strike to bring down democratic elected President Allende to put a dictator that brought murder to Chile and all South America
Argentina has 30,000 people who disappeared on a plan organized by the School of the Americas in the United States
TC, we hear endless noise about (evil) Russian oligarchs, those at the heart of the regime, those co-opted (or else...), we don't seem ever to have heard enough about the dug-in dog-in-the-manger oligarchs who've kept Ukraine ungovernable... and while we hear plenty about Q, about the politicians, the media, the stirrers, the storm-troopers... and not about their key operatives, the big lobbies that pull strings in Washington, we never hear enough about those who pay for all the chaos and subversion ("legitimate discourse") designed to make America as weak and ungovernable as Ukraine: America's very own activist oligarchs.
Nor do we hear enough about how they do it...
And when it comes to supply chains, don't the paymasters and their discreetly hidden pipelines feeding finance to all these subversive forces count for more than the armies and equipment of the servants at their command?
Thanks, sounds as though this book is all about the very heart of darkness...
When at the age of 8-9 I attended a Dominican convent school near Capetown, the Irish nuns would keep interjecting the words "By the Powers of Darkness"... And of course, I wondered what these could be...
(We couldn't have nuns exclaiming "What the Deuce!" could we?)
If we weren't aware of those Powers before, we've no excuse for ignorance now...
Peter, If you look, you will find that I have provided info linking connections between social media (Ruble and others), Trump, Thiel, Fox News, et al, to the right-wing, global truckers movement. The following refers to what may be canny about the Biden administration's dealing with the Ukraine/Putin business.
'U.S. Battles Putin by Disclosing His Next Possible Moves'
'Declassified information is part of a campaign, backed by Britain, to complicate what officials say are Russia’s plans to invade Ukraine.'
The United States hopes that disclosing the plans of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia regarding Ukraine will disrupt them, perhaps delaying an invasion and buying more time for diplomacy.
'The United States hopes that disclosing the plans of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia regarding Ukraine will disrupt them, perhaps delaying an invasion and buying more time for diplomacy.'
Feb. 12, 2022, 10:23 a.m. ET
'WASHINGTON — After decades of getting schooled in information warfare by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the United States is trying to beat the master at his own game.'
'In recent weeks, the Biden administration has detailed the movement of Russian special operation forces to Ukraine’s borders, exposed a Russian plan to create a video of a faked atrocity as a pretext for an invasion, outlined Moscow’s war plans, warned that an invasion would result in possibly thousands of deaths and hinted that Russian officers had doubts about Mr. Putin.'
'Then, on Friday, Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, told reporters at the White House that the United States was seeing signs of Russian escalation and that there was a “credible prospect” of immediate military action. Other officials said the announcement was prompted by new intelligence that signaled an invasion could begin as soon as Wednesday.'
'All told, the extraordinary series of disclosures — unfolding almost as quickly as information is collected and assessed — has amounted to one of the most aggressive releases of intelligence by the United States since the Cuban missile crisis, current and former officials say.'
'It is an unusual gambit, in part because Mr. Biden has repeatedly made clear he has no intention of sending U.S. troops to defend Ukraine. In effect, the administration is warning the world of an urgent threat, not to make the case for a war but to try to prevent one.'
'The hope is that disclosing Mr. Putin’s plans will disrupt them, perhaps delaying an invasion and buying more time for diplomacy, or even giving Mr. Putin a chance to reconsider the political, economic and human costs of an invasion.'
'At the same time, Biden administration officials said they had a narrower and more realistic goal: They want to make it more difficult for Mr. Putin to justify an invasion with lies, undercutting his standing on the global stage and building support for a tougher response.'
'Intelligence agencies, prodded by the White House, have declassified information, which in turn has been briefed to Congress, shared with reporters and discussed by Pentagon and State Department spokesmen.'
'Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, with President Biden, has shown a willingness to declassify information to complicate Russia’s planning.'
'But the disclosures are complicated by history. Before the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration released intelligence that officials said justified pre-emptive action, including purported intercepts of Iraqi military conversations, photos of mobile biological weapons labs and statements accusing Baghdad of building a fleet of drones to launch a chemical attack on the United States. The material was all wrong, reliant on sources who lied, incorrect interpretations of Iraq’s actions and senior officials who looked at raw intelligence and saw what they wanted to see.'
'But this situation, American officials say, is very different. Washington’s claims about Russia’s troop buildup have been confirmed by commercial satellite imagery of a quality previously unavailable. The details of Moscow’s secret disinformation plots are in line with the Kremlin’s propaganda campaigns that play out on social media platforms and have been tracked by independent researchers.'
'Most important, the officials said, there is a fundamental distinction between Iraq in 2003 and Ukraine in 2022. “In Iraq, intelligence was used and deployed from this very podium to start a war,” Mr. Sullivan said on Friday. “We are trying to stop a war.”
'The last time Russia moved against Ukraine, in 2014, intelligence officials blocked the Obama administration from sharing what they knew. But the Biden administration has studied those mistakes. The new disclosures reflect the influence of Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, and William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, who have shown a willingness to declassify information in an effort to disrupt Russian planning, administration officials said.'
“We have learned a lot, especially since 2014, about how Russia uses the information space as part of its overall security and military apparatus,” said Emily J. Horne, the spokeswoman for the National Security Council. “And we have learned a lot about how to deny them some impact in that space.”
'One U.S. intelligence official said that when the country’s spy agencies have information that could help the world make better judgments about Russian activity, it should be released, as long as the government can avoid exposing how the information was collected or who passed it along.'
'It is, according to some strategists, a full-fledged information battle.'
“I think it is great,” said Beth Sanner, a former top intelligence official who regularly briefed President Donald J. Trump. “My guess is that these disclosures are freaking the Kremlin and the security services out. And, more important, it can narrow Putin’s options and make him think twice.”
'The Kremlin has been on a full propaganda push since last year, not just in Russia but also in the separatist regions of eastern Ukraine, and even in Kyiv, the capital. Moscow has accused Ukraine of plotting a genocide against ethnic Russians and denounced Ukrainians as Nazi sympathizers. Russian officials have also accused Ukraine and the United States of hatching secret plots to justify an intervention or invasion of separatist-controlled territory.' (NYTimes) See link below.
Here's an open door to endorse consensus for peace and environmental health/sanity:
BREAKING: Russia Gains Two Vast New Protected Areas
At a time of rising geopolitical tensions, this milestone also shows the possibilities of cooperation and joint achievement between U.S. and Russian scientists and conservationists.
"In a huge step forward for the stronghold protection strategy developed over the past two decades by Wild Salmon Center and our partners in Russia, the government of Khabarovsky-Krai officially created two massive new protected areas on the Tugur and Maia watersheds—a combined area of 3.7 million acres.
"The creation of the Tugursky (Middendorf) and Maisky Reserves will be a powerful tool to safeguard these systems' priceless biodiversity—including salmon and giant taimen—against expanding threats from logging, mining, and industrial development in the Russian Far East.
“"There aren’t too many places like this on Earth,” says WSC President & CEO Guido Rahr. “These rivers are capable of growing salmonids that surpass 100 pounds, and they support amazing wildlife: Steller’s sea eagles, Blakiston’s fish owls, wolves, brown bears, moose, Manchurian elk, and dozens of other species.” "
RIVER TIGERS
"And “River Tigers” a 14-minute documentary film from Wild Salmon Center, Maser Films and Yonder Content, puts you on the old MI-9 Soviet helicopter to this land before time.
"The film follows a trio of adventuring fishermen to the Tugur River, the crown jewel of taimen strongholds but one nonetheless under threat. American conservationist Guido Rahr, explorer-scientist Mikhail Skopets, and Russian industrial magnate Alexander Abramov converge on the river in an attempt to find the elusive fish, to unlock its mysteries, and figure out a way to protect this singular place among the harsh realities of life in the Wild West of the Russian Far East.
“"River Tigers” is about the passions and the unlikely friendships that drive conservation in this last frontier.
It’s a trip to one of the last truly wild places on Earth.
Powell wanted to be appointed “special counsel” so she could investigate false election fraud crimes, u know full fill her childhood dream of becoming a Stalinist show trial lawyer.
Also appalling about these folks is they’re couching their terrorism as “human rights protests”. My guess is that US police forces won’t be as nice as Canadians are. Except these guys are white…
Trudeau did not sound as though he was prepared to "be nice" on the clip I saw this morning. Personally, I hope he hits the the lawless idiots with everything the RCP can muster.
DUNDAS, RUMBLE THIEL, TRUMP, look as though they are CONNECTED. Threads, yes TC, but I don't know how jumbled. See the following:
'Dec 14 (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Donald Trump's social media venture said on Tuesday it has entered into a technology and cloud-services agreement with Canadian video platform Rumble Inc.
As part of the agreement, Rumble will deliver video and streaming for TRUTH Social, the proposed social media app from Trump.
Rumble was launched in 2013 by tech entrepreneur Chris Pavlovski as an alternative YouTube-style site, and is popular among U.S. conservatives seeking an alternative to Big Tech. Its top trending videos include those from conservative commentators Dan Bongino and Dinesh D’Souza, as well as former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon. It is backed by venture capitalist Peter Thiel and author-turned-U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance through Narya Capital.
On Dec. 1 Rumble said it would go public by merging with blank-check firm CF Acquisition Corp VI (CFVI.O) at an initial enterprise value of $2.1 billion. The combined company will be called Rumble and is expected to list on the Nasdaq.
Former Trump administration lawyer Michael Ellis joined Rumble in November as its first-ever general counsel and corporate secretary. read more
Thiel was one of Facebook’s first large investors, investing $500,000 in the company in 2004. In 2016, Thiel voiced enthusiastic but qualified support for Trump, describing Trump’s comments about women as “clearly offensive and inappropriate,” but suggesting that Trump would help make the U.S. more prosperous by reducing deficits and taking the U.S. out of “undeclared wars.” In 2021, Thiel donated $10 million to groups backing the campaigns of Trump-supported Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters and Hillbilly Elegy author and venture capitalist J.D. Vance, an Ohio Senate candidate who has fought to rebrand himself as pro-Trump despite previous harshly critical comments. In January, Thiel and Donald Trump Jr. co-hosted two fundraisers for Harriet Hageman, a Republican primary challenger to Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who on Friday was censured by the Republican National Committee for serving on a House committee investigating the January 6 riot. Thiel also invested in Rumble, a video sharing platform that bills itself as “immune to cancel culture.”
SURPRISING FACT
Thiel’s company Founders Fund invested more than $10 million in Boldend, a “cyber warfare” startup that developed tools for hacking Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp, a source familiar with the company told Forbes.
Rumble this year secured an investment from Narya Capital, Peter Thiel and Colt Ventures. TORONTO, CANADA AND NEW YORK, NY – December 1, 2021 – Rumble Inc. (“Rumble” or “the Company”), the neutral video platform, and CF Acquisition Corp.Dec 2, 2021
'Rumble, a fast-growing social media business with a strong following among conservative Americans, aims to take itself public next year in a SPAC deal that could value the company at over $2 billion, a transaction similar to the one former President Trump has envisioned for his own right-wing media firm.'
'To go public, Rumble intends to merge with an investment company initially created by Cantor Fitzgerald, a decades-old Wall Street bank. The deal would leave Rumble with $300 million in cash, the company said in a statement announcing the transaction on Wednesday evening. It hopes to complete the process by the second quarter of next year.'
'The Cantor Fitzgerald investment vehicle, which already trades publicly under the CFVI ticker, saw its shares rise Thursday, increasing by nearly 25% to $12.'
'Rumble, which was founded in 2013, bills itself as a “true neutral platform,” but has become a popular site among Republicans over the last two years as criticism of existing social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter has increased among conservatives, who say they unfairly limit speech.'
Subscribers, This movement is spreading to New Zealand, France, the USA and more. Fox News is egging it on here and what about Dark Money? This isn't staying in Canada. It threatens the economy and democracy.
Once again, Fox News stokes a protest against a Democratic president
Ottawa citizens go to work as truckers block the streets near Parliament Hill. (Washington Pos)
By Philip Bump
National correspondent
Yesterday at 1:38 p.m. EST
'The story of the protests that have upended the Canadian capital of Ottawa is not yet fully written. That’s true in part because the protest — or, as authorities have called it, the occupation — is ongoing; it’s not yet clear how it ends. It’s also true because all of the details of its genesis have likely not yet emerged. How did it come about? Who was involved in planning and amplifying the idea? Such details often take months to come to light.'
'If, as seems likely, a similar truck-centered protest unfolds in the United States, that last question will have some obvious immediate answers. The American right has been very active in supporting the events in Ottawa and, often, in calling for something similar here. And when we talk about elements of the American right with a disproportionate ability to be heard, we’re talking about the hosts of Fox News’s prime-time programming.'
Sign up for How To Read This Chart, a weekly data newsletter from Philip Bump
'In the past month, Fox News has mentioned the truckers or Ottawa 2½ times as often as CNN and five times as often as MSNBC. Analysis by Matthew Gertz of the watchdog group Media Matters estimates that the network has spent more than 10 hours covering the story since the middle of January. The shows on which it has been mentioned the most, according to analysis of closed-captioning data? Those hosted by Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity.'
“It’s hard to overstate the historical significance of what we’re watching right here,” Carlson said on his program Thursday night. “The Canadian trucker convoy is the single most successful human rights protest in a generation.”
'At another point, Carlson reported that American truckers were planning their own convoy. The graphic over his shoulder read, “Here It Comes.” See links for this sorry and link to CNN for its story below.
I don't know, Peter. I think the thrust here to hurt Biden/Democrats' ability to pass build back agenda, to tie up sectors of the economy as all part of the right-wing moves to pull down democracies.
I made no mention of the sources of finance for the propaganda that secured Brexit in the UK, both known sources and the ultimately secret ones behind many of those. We've seen only the beginning of the chaos to which that development can lead.
As for what we're seeing now in Ottawa -- to the US what Ukraine is for Russia -- may this not be a dress rehearsal for other such scenarios worldwide? A growing series of well orchestrated disturbances designed to bring on something like General Pinochet's overthrow of the Allende regime... on an incomparably vaster scale.
And while Allende's was a socialist experiment, this time the target is democracy itself.
Curious the use of the words Truth and Social for lies and the destruction of society...
It seems, however, that the Koch brothers want nothing more to do with this kind of banditry...
Will such a convoy help the anti-democracy movement? If responsible leaders act responsibly, it will hurt. How many autoworkers are now laud off because of the Canadian protest? Has that made them more, or less, sympathetic to the protesters’ “cause?” I’d say, less. And if there’s a similar demonstration here, it should have the same result. Remember all those people who want to get back to “normal?” They aren’t going to agree with something like what has happened in Canada, unless the authorities here overreach.
Responsible leaders can nip it in the bud, like authorities did to prevent trucks from entering Paris--as reported elsewhere in these comments by Fern McBride. Like we learned after 9/11 about how jets can become weaponized.
Conservatives in Canada are against it. Not sure how businesses here would take to it either. I’d say not too well, especially after the past two years. And I read there are children in the convoy as well. Tell me about “human rights”.
Dundas is dangerous and ignorant. She equates protests in countries that are trying to move from poverty or unfair practices or dictatorship (Thailand), people risking their lives and protesting for some form of freedom and democracy to policial pawns in their trucks hoping to shut down a democracy. How can she compare that kind of survival with the misguided anti-vaccine and anti-maskers crowd? These protestors are knowingly or ignorantly working for the extreme right. Same as The red hats on this side of the border. I’ve seen survival protests including in Guadalajara, Mexico in 2008 when protestors closed down a highway for hours to make a point that their sugarcane industry was subject to unfair labor practices. They couldn’t work for poor wages while the owners raked in a fortune. We, as tourists, didn’t get where we were going that day, but we became more than tourists.
Irenie, We don't know her connections, funding sources, and, we don't know her level of intelligence. I bet there is plenty concerning Dundas that we are ignorant of.
cited by original poster is informative, and that she gave an inflammatory speech in Washington and has been stirring the pot for a long time.
She’s “an evangelical attorney…” and here’s a quote from one of her speeches at a Washington DC rally, 1/5/21:
“We would be well within our rights to take any alleged American who acted in a turncoat fashion and sold us out and committed treason — we would be well within our right to take them out back and shoot them or hang them,” Dundas thundered, speaking from a stage”
The evil right will hijack, skew, lie and pull any propaganda trick imaginable to impress the orange arse. As to Rupert’s motive in Supporting these big rig desperados, power and greed
Perhaps the media could stop adopting the moniker of "Freedom Convoy," which only serves to underscore the message of the menacing, manipulative forces behind it. "Convoy of Rowdy Anti-everything Puppets" [CRAP]... Just spitballing here...
I continually shake my head at the nerve of these angry men who act as though they are the center of the universe. Just as with the insurrectionists, they believe they are the victims therefore they are entitled to trash anything and everything like spoiled children throwing a temper tantrum! When my children were young and threw tantrums, they had times out! I’d like to see more of these immature, childish brats get the times out they’ve earned by their behavior! I have ceased being polite and not saying out loud how I feel because I might offend! Those thumb-sucking babies are putting the economies of two nations at risk because they are not getting their way. Grab them by the scruff of their necks and their belts and throw them in the time out room that has big thick bars! I’ve had it!
The permission to act meanly and brutishly was given during four years by our thuggish ex prez and those who love his ways are happily modeling themselves in his image. I’m 72 so I won’t see the full extent of this extreme bad behavior and the horrors of climate change but I truly worry for our young people. Civility is such a simple and elegant principle. Bullies are their own form of hell.
It’s so devastating to know we won’t see all the fallout from the extreme bad behavior of TFG and all associated with him and his crew- but our children, grandchildren and generations to come will be affected for longer than we would like to think.
Growlers also are small fragments of icebergs about the size of a truck or grand piano (per NOAA), the image that came to my mind with Kim's comment. Seemed consistent with mention of the Salish Sea but I couldn't figure out how that would pertain to the truck blockades.
We stayed for a week in a hotel room equidistant from the San Diego airport and the North Island Naval Air Station. Civilian airliners couldn’t be heard above the background ventilation sounds. F-18s taking off from North Island were obnoxious.
The USAF used the PR slogan “the sound of freedom” in the 1960s.
You speak to me, Kim. I so want to "insulate myself from this madness" and do it perhaps too often to preserve mental and spiritual health. Then, try to carry on by doing my small part against the growing evil.
"Disrupting a nation’s supply chains destabilizes its economy and thereby weakens the government in power. Indeed, U.S. lawmakers know this quite well: in 1972, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency funded a 26-day truckers’ strike in Chile that helped to destabilize the government of democratically elected Salvador Allende, who would be overthrown the following year by right-wing dictator General Augusto Pinochet."
It's critical to stop any copycat protests this side of the border! The Canadian truckers must be disassembled sooner rather than later, before the GOP mirror the movement here!
Such a great deal of information to digest! Thank you, Heather, for presenting it with your inimitable accuracy and insuppressible truth-values.
It essential that media amplifies that the vast majority of Canadians, Canadian truckers, Canadian workers, U.S. truckers, U.S. workers, and U.S. citizens oppose these protests. This is NOT a protest that has broad popular support. The constant coverage provides the wrong impression of the breadth of support. Let’s see more coverage of those opposing it.
Who are the Mother Truckers and what is their objective? As Heather and VermontGirl157 highlight, it is DISRUPTION and DESTABILIZATION. It is unbelievable that a bevy of truckers would spontaneously gather in Ottawa and spread to elsewhere in Canada and now the United States to block road ways and establish elaborate living quarters including saunas.
Independent truckers live a financially fraught life. Often they have heavy monthly payments on their mammoth vehicles and weeks of down time would be extremely costly. Heather mentions a conspiracist, James Bauder, who purportedly was an instigator of these “Freedom Convoys.” I believe that there are more sinister elements behind these organized and sustained activities that are currently disrupting a significant portion of the U. S./Canadian auto industry.
Heather mentions the 1972 26-day CIA-instigated trucker strike in Chile. As Political Officer at our Santiago embassy (1966-1969) I had insight into some CIA machinations. I believe that this strike, organized through the Alarcon brothers and financed by CIA (Nixon/KIssinger in Washington), was intended to cripple the Chilean economy and weaken the Allende government.
So who is behind the Mother Truckers, who appear to me to be a civilian equivalent of the Proud Boys and the Oath Takers? This expansive ‘vaccine protest’ does not magically spring from the head of Zeus. I urge the American and Canadian governments to follow the money and to unravel the trail of THE WHO AND THE HOW. (Does Fox News coverage provide a hint?)
I saw that in Vienna yesterday there was a convoy of cars in alliance with the Canadian truckers honking and flying flags and thinking they are protesting the vaccine mandates better than on foot. It made them easier to arrest and ticket. No car honking is allowed in the inner city. Also, the city had just removed a 5 month camp site from a youth environmental alliance that it had negotiated with about a new expressway that the Green Party members had approved, so I think they are primed to nip any insurrection in the bud. The news analysis of this was that people who were driving in the protest were needy of notice and had not been getting much marching on the ground and that had thinned the anti-vaccine protests out over time especially with the rainy weather. This was a new way to get notice, behind the safety of the vehicle. It still did not stop the police from halting them and people in Vienna did listen to their police. Of course their convoy only had about 100 vehicles. Still hearing halt and no in german might put a cramp on the truckers in Canada too. The neo-Nazis among them are assuming that all people with German accents in uniforms are on their side. It might be enlightening to find out that that is not the case.
Linda I saw that there was a 10,000 person protest in Canberra. Is this also a Mother Trucker protest of anti-Vacers? Illegal and should be decisively squashed. Arrest drivers, seize trucks, and then let the judicial process proceed at a snail’s pace. If they claim a ‘legal protest,’ I would respond with immediate legal actions.
I fear this disruption of American and Canadian supply chains is just the beginning of rhe anarchy about to be unleashed in the U.S. War may be closer to home than we imagine.
Fox's gloating over what's happening in Canada may be premature. The Canadian response to the so-called Freedom convoy is beginning to consolidate. The Conservatives who were giving passive support have backed away, and the stories of Canadians whose lives were disrupted, who lost their paychecks, who barricaded themselves in their homes out of fear are beginning to be heard. I have way too much information to fit in to this blog. You can read that Ontario has now declared a state of emergency which will empower the government to take decisive action. I have been overwhelmed by the eloquent expressions of moral outrage by my friends. I just want to share a song composed by a Canadian musician with my fellow readers of this blog- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOC-IUV_pzk
Dr Richardson, thank you once again for a well written overview of the issues at hand. In yesterday's letter you pointed out the slanted message from the collective media (mainstream media in this message). Today, you once again pointed out the positive's from the current administrative's economic decisions and actions in your opening paragraph, yet no where in the media is this message delivered to the general public. I've been reading and watching with interest for the national coverage on the economy to point out all of these positives - yet they seem blind to them. I realize that 'negative news sells', but I do not understand why the message is being lost on the minions who don't actually read beyond the newsbits and soundbites. Could it be that's because all of our press is owned by Republican party members? Or could it be that reporters are unwilling to weigh in with some upbeat news? The 'sky is falling' inflation message is all these folks hear. No wonder Biden has such low poll ratings (who do they actually 'poll'?) How do we get the news anchors on National News to tell the whole story??
Facebook is a privatized delivery vehicle for cyber weapons of mass distraction and disruption with the goal of destabilization. Karl von Clausewitz and Tsung Tsu would both be so proud. Psychological weapons are cheap, they don’t cost your side lives, they remain deny-able, and effective. The protesting truckers don’t see the pys-op, because they are the psy-op.
How long will we tolerate an American company giving blind access to our fellow citizen’s psyches with the goal of radicalizing them, and directing them to disrupt daily life on bridges and highways, Public Health and school board meetings, election counts, gun purchases, armed protests, etc, etc?
I agree. Vehicles for the spread of lies, and the preying on emotions to incite unlawful and antisocial behaviors are our biggest challenge in this moment. Building minds to be resistant to this 💩 will take multiple generations. Our Earth does not have that much time.
DISRUPTIONS and
DESTABILIZATION
Why Heather, I believe you’ve uncovered the GOP “platform”
VermontGirl.
Absolutely great summary statement. You captured exactly the actual Republican "platform".
Thanks.
Leninist tactics. Create disorder Destroy the bourgeois state. Create revolution. A small organized faction can do a lot of damage. Radical Trumpublicans have become a revolutionary nihilist party destroying governments by manipulating the workers who feel oppressed and betrayed. Truckers have a hard job made worse by neoliberal deregulation. Thankfully the Teamsters see through this but are they as influential as they were before deregulation? The GOP is in an existential struggle between oligarchs and fascists on one side and traditional conservatives who are finally speaking out in fear as the clock strikes 11:59 pm.
Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and others need to pay at the voting booth and in their campaign coffers for their anti-US platforms.
Can you see them losing in a Republican primary or against a Democratic opponent? Don't overestimate the intelligence of their supporters, and don't ignore the motivation of their donors.
There is a tipping point. I don’t know where it is or when it will come, but Cruz kicked his constituents during last winter’s power outage and freeze. He supports the RNC platform. MOST IMPORTANTLY, don’t underestimate their voters and don’t give up.
Yes, Stanley, we must stay strong and united.
SLWeston, “sigh,” it’s not easy, and that’s one benefit to participating in this group.
Like your optimism or the idea that in the long run this will change. Yet one way to look at this is that in the “long run” we all die.
Ol’ Flawriduh Cracker, Yep. We could lose, and despite most movies and Candide, bad guys do win and Noah wasn’t out for an afternoon cruise cause the weather was good.
I have a dear friend (college roommate, fellow JFK supporter, well educated, etc.) still living in Cruz’ home state. She tells me that Cruz is “Whip Smart”. Why? Forty years of propaganda and his degree from Harvard. Jon Margolis is correct. Do not assume because you see a few meatheads on T.V. that there are not intelligent folks who have been badly served by media and politicians willing to vote against their own interests as well.
When you suggest that people support reactionaries because the are stupid, people you exhibit the kind of easy elitism that has cost us heavily at the polls since 1980. I fall into the same trap sometimes, but I try to resist the temptation. If we want to win people over, and we should, we need to respect their opinions even as we reject them.
They are easily manipulated as the wealthy who are behind a lot of this stand back. The wealthy will be fine...for awhile....until climate change catches up with them, so they don't care. Here is Oregon we are hearing about something to happen in the middle of March and of course our old friend Timber Unity, financed from out of state, is partly behind this. I would not say that a lot of these folks are stupid, but my relatives who sometimes bleat all this nonsense, are very poorly educated and have scut jobs.
The majority of the people at 1/6 had jobs. Many were wealthy. The money to fund these groups isn’t coming in from small fish. There are big money donors keeping it going. But they are grifting from the small guys and someone is keeping most of the money. In the end the boots on the ground people and small uneducated donors will discover they have been seriously affected by their own actions. They’re not trying to shut down one company, they want the whole economy and government to collapse. They be just as affected by it. Cruz, Paul, Hawley, etc. have delusions that they will rise to the top and be rulers of the world. They don’t care how many die.
The "boots on the ground people and small uneducated donors" won't recognize the impacts of their own actions; they'll blame the Democrats.
True, but their lives will still be affected by their actions. I have hopes they will admit it to themselves when their supplies and paychecks dry up.
Yes, they do.
Where were the 'traditional conservatives' when the Senate refused to go along with the House's impeachment of the defeated former president? It is very difficult to grow a spine after the one you were born with melts.
Yes! You nailed it! The GOP is in the middle of an identity crisis. Hoping they figure it out before they take us with them.
I think the identity crisis, and any attendant struggle, is long over. I don't see these "traditional conservatives." I see two gutsy members of the party who have actually been willing to put the integrity of the country above their personal ambitions. With those notable exceptions, I don't see conservatives at all. I am an unrepentant liberal Democrat, never a doubt, but I remember a time when Republicans were human beings. These people are monsters.
Unfortunately, identity crisis is more of a catch phrase. Maybe way too PC. The truth is harsh but on target.
My only concern is even if they decide to go toward sanity, that only gets them back to run of the mill God-awful. Still better than End Of Days nihilist destruction, I guess.
Actually there is NO struggle at all. The Fascist Party is in full bloom.
Most Fascists don't think of themselves as bad guys advocating an authoritarian form of government. They have been convinced that is what we have right now. They want to be the good guys, getting rid of it so they can have their freedoms back, which they believe an overly liberal democracy have taken away. That's why Fascists always wave their nation's flag and call themselves patriots. Once they get what they want, many of them are usually purged by those in charge, as occurred in Germany and the USSR.
Jack, who knew, right? The Neo Fascist poised to take power in 2024 and install a permanent oligarchy/theocracy to replace sweating masses Democracy have a collective vision.
Features include restoration of the “Mythic Past” when “separate but equal” seemed like a good way to deal with “uppity negroes.” As well business must be at last able to breathe the fresh air of Free Market Theology: No unions, regulation or tort liability, but plenty of legal power to for example bring the hammer down on anyone that suggest a company is price fixing, or gaining an unfair monopoly.
And you are right about when they take power if we are to give credence to the philosopher Karl Popper who among other things revolutionized how the methodology of scientific theory should be addressed.
He also wrote about “free speech and the role of tolerance” - (and this is really truncated to save reading time.) “if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant…. they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”
Popper saw first person the rise if Nazi Germany.
In any case, you can take it to the bank that suppression of argument will be among the first thing on the Fascist agenda. Maybe Florida’s “Woke Act” to prohibit teaching anything about our racist past that might hurt a ( I kid you not) White students feelings or make them fee guilt or shame will cost a teacher their job and likely civil law suit.
That crap has already been enshrined into law here in NH, as well as a 24 week abortion ban w/no exceptions except to save the life of the mother (the legislature is trying to enact a bill for men to sue their women to prevent the abortion long enough to force women to have to bear the child, even it the male is a rapist not yet charged or convicted. The Republican majority legislature and the governor are absolutely ignoring the will of voters and the general populace.
VermontGirl57 - You win the Substack today 🏆
"Wreck the economy. Blame the Democrats." The Republicans have been doing it since 1876, against Grover Cleveland. They will keep doing it, in the immortal words of Michael Jordan referring to faking being fouled, "as long as it works."
More broadly: either Invent a problem where none existed (*cough* CRT *cough*) or take an existing problem (like, say, a pandemic) and do everything possible to make it worse.
Then blame the Democrats.
And the legitimization of ignorance.
Succinct
Not so “grand” anymore Repubs.
Garnished with bigotry and hatred.
This post is perfection (as are all of your posts). Thanks to you and Eric Boehlert, we have sources to focus on what the "real news" is as opposed to the agenda mainstream media want to propagate.
Actually, that's all there every was/is with the Trumpsters.
D & D GOP. Has a certain ring to it. I hope the GOP pays a price for what's happening. Auto plants are closing, and factory workers are being idled. It appears we're just seeing the start of these protests, which if they spread to major metro areas of the U.S. will harm much more than auto production.
Naturally, the Republicans will at some point blame Biden for any damage to the economy. But workers will know the truth.
Disinformation, too.
They should pay you handsomely.
Being part of this HCR community is my reward.
I landed here a few years ago after my (recently departed) older sister introduced me to HCR. In a weird way this place keeps me connected to her.
She who warned me when I was 12….you better be a liberal or I’ll get Vermont to revoke your birth certificate😂
Best big sis ever!
I so appreciate your work in putting together these columns, especially for including references to specific information. It is seriously wonderful. We can only wish our TV "journalists" would do the same, i.e. prepare a broadcast segment and post the sources publicly on a website. I believe that would quickly reveal the fabulists among them, whatever their political persuasion.
I absolutley agree. I was thinking this as I was reading it. I am beyond gratefully for Heather. Why is it that she is able to give facts so clearly and concisely and "journalists" aren't or can't?
I’m so grateful for her as well, because the way she writes seems like it takes out the impact of “empathic anguish” and lets me process the information.
Or won't
B-I-N-G-O, Pam.
It occurred to me recently that increasingly we seem to have authors rather than journalists working for the press. I have no problem with journalists writing books but not at the expense of the factual, timely news they should be reporting. I find myself turning to HCR and other historians more and more for fact-based information on current events. Thank god for them and their willingness to step up when so greatly needed. What they’re doing is difficult on several levels.
Journalists have deadlines, editors, and their families. Most do not have a Phd nor decades of teaching and research experience. There are incredible journalist out there. Find one u like and stick with them.
There are some excellent journalists, and I believe most of them are local. I subscribe to the Cincinnati Business Courier and an ongoing story for the past 2 years are has been - wait for it - Hamilton County GOP In Disarray. One reporter has lambasted Republicans for how they've handled the state and federal maps.
There are journalists, reporters, columnists, broadcasters. Heather is able to take pieces from each of these news conveyors and produce something daily that is more powerful than the the sources. While working.
Yes, there are excellent journalists. I was trying to make a point but evidently not very well (she said smiling).
I thought you made it perfectly clear. I'm sure there are complex explanations for even the best journalists to bend and create the news, but the depressingly obvious one in this culture is money. Anxiety-producing headlines sell papers.
Part of it is that they rarely get to go in depth and must squeeze a lot in a small time segment. They also need ratings. Their owners are suspect as well. We never watch channel two in Portland because it belongs to Sinclair. Our local rag is Gannett. It has ceased to be much of a newspaper and Salem is a capital city.
And part of it is that they choose to cover scandal and trivia. It wouldn't take long to mention the facts that Heather has in her first paragraph--I bet they would if it were a Republican administration. Sinclair is second to Fox in the "worst" category.
I would like to change just one word in your last sentence, Gailee (lovely name, by the way): ‘Why is it that she is able to give facts so clearly and concisely and "journalists" aren't or [won't]?’
I agree. Thank you.
They don't get paid to relay facts. Sadly.
I totally agree!
I hearted you, Gailee, as I often do — until “and ‘journalists’ aren't or can't?” 😟
Most TV news shows are entertainment, not journalism. The idea of a 24 hour news channel is absurd. Fox, CNN, MSNBC - all committed to keeping eyeballs glued to the screen, not keeping viewers informed. The only legitimate news show on TV is the PBS News Hour.
And even Judy Woodruff, in my opinion, goes too far in airing Republican complaints and opinions.
I agree. She has given airtime to some utter nonsense during interviews when hard questions were in order. And they have joined the ‘inflation bandwagon’ without giving the recovery its full due to date. Cmon, PBS.
Agree, Woodruff panders to the right wing. Its tiresome.
Bring back the fairness doctrine! Balancing is just an act.
She wants to be “balanced”, I can’t watch her anymore, something is either true or it’s not, she never call’s out people that are lying to her face, it’s snippet news anyhow, if you rely on the NH for your news, you will be woefully uninformed.
No, I surely don't completely rely on her for news. And I am deeply grateful for having Heather's thoughtful writing, including the links to sources. How about you? Where do you get your news?
No she is actually 75, and is different from 80. She will retire soon I would expect after the 2024 election.
Judy Woodruff recently turned 80.
What? What? Ouch! 80 isn’t the reason to blame Judy Woodruff for a bias. 80 could be a reason to see more clearly. To compare and contrast and analyze and connect. Let’s move beyond age and be specific in criticism or praise. Please. I’m 75.
All I did was to report her her age, which, apparently is on 76. I find it interesting that so many of you have drawn conclusions of that little sentence.
Agree with all above re JW! I really have a hard time with her. The only sensible person on PBS Newshour is Jonathan Gebhart (spelling?) on Fridays!
Capehart, I think
Yupp! Thanks for correcting!
What is your point, Richard? Could it be ageism? 'prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of a person's age.' "ageism in recruitment is an increasing problem"
Absolutely not, Fern. I was just writing what I think I heard or read on NPR or PBS that Judy W. had just turned 80. Somebody else later wrote that Judy was born in 1946, which would actually make her 76. BTW, on April 3 this year, I shall turn 78, having been born in 1944. I was just thinking how great it was that Judy is still doing a good job and hasn't been kicked off because of her age.
And your point is???
My comment is in response to Richard Burrill's post about her age.
❤️
Born November 1946.
Hmmm...I think I hear or read on NPR or PBS that she just turned 80. I may be wrong.
My point was that Judy Woodruff has turned 80, and that is remarkable for someone to be still doing a good job broadcasting. We you taking offense at my writing that she is 80. Hell, I'll be 78 on April 3 this year. I think it's great for some of us older folks to be productive. Apparently she is takin Goerthe's advice "Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
I wonder if the clairvoyant subscribers on the forum today got your drift Richard.
'A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.[
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Thanks, Fern. Here's something else from Goethe: "Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid." We had snow overnight here in York, PA. Maybe 2 inches. Winter has returned. Enjoy this Sunday and Valentines Day tomorrow. May we all continue in peace.
I am born in 1946 and I am not 80 yet :-)
BBC and al Jeezera are significant purveyors of quality news content. The Guardian continues to uphold high print journalism standards.
Yes. BBC, al Jeezera, and the Guardian are my go to along with a few over here in Europe. I dropped WoPo and am dropping NYT because they are just not what they once were. The Guardian in the States is different, but I subscribe. I miss KCRW in LA. Today on a Twitter feed I read many Americans angry with journalists and media not making Trumps taking national security material headline news.
And even the legit registers need shows are answerable for libel and falsehood, though they are chatty and sensational. Unlike FOX Entertainment which is not registered as a news network and is rarely held accountable for their frequent false statements.
Headline News!!!
The younger gal is Nermeen Sheik(Not correct spelling). As one of our readers here wrote yesterday a quote by Amy at a meeting in 2008: "What this nation needs is a Fourth Estate, not a 'for the state.' " Was that you, Liz? I watch Democracy Now! (please don't forget the exclamation point!) every day to see and listen to real people being interviewed. Democracy Now! is far more important than any of the corporate media. Amy, Juan, and Nermeen beat the crap out of those talking heads. That is real journalism, folks, and don't you forget it. Watch Democracy Now! M - F online at www.democracynow.org, and spread the word about these journalists who are the real Fourth Estate!
It was me. I'll never forget how the writers stood, cheered and applauded when that came out of her mouth!
Thank you for this information.
Yes, Liz, I did see her chase the creep! BTW, Democracy Now! recently celebrated their twenty-fifth anniversary. Another show I like is Thom Hartmann. He broadcasts from Noon to 3:00 p.m., ET, M - F. I get his show on Facebook. the show is also on Free Speech TV. He gives lost of good interviews with people like Ro Khana, Tom Pokantz, economist Richard D. Wolff, etc. Thom's show is a call-in and is based in Portsland, Oregon.
Also, I would think that Boston would carry Democracy Now!, which is based in NYC.
Democracy Now for many years supported Glen Greenwald and Julian Assange - two “journalists” who were decidedly pro-Putin and who helped Trump get elected. It’s hard for me to trust them now.
Neither Greenwald nor Assange are pro-Putin. The USA government hates them because they are real Fourth Estate journalists who have exposed real truths about bad things our government had done.
At one time, back before 2014, Greenwald and Assange might have resembled real journalists. From 2015 onward they both became partisan tools (witting or unwitting is unclear) of Putin, attacking various democrats and helping Trump get elected. In 2016 Assange received a trove of Clinton’s emails from Russian intelligence, and timed their release to help Trump’s campaign (coordinating with Roger Stone). Greenwald began attacking Clinton during the 2016 campaign with suspect material supplied to him by Russian intelligence in 2015 and 2016. Greenwald has been let go by every media outlet he once worked for, for sloppy work. Nowadays he appears regularly on Tucker Carlson’s (72 times as of late 2021) and Laura Ingraham’s (40 times) shows, on Fox News. That’s Fox News, the home of your “real Fourth Estate journalists”. Greenwald’s latest “journalistic” efforts have been to assist Trump in “exposing the real truth” about Biden’s “Ukraine corruption”. Assange is a fraud, and Greenwald is a partisan hack. Neither has any credibility, today.
Thanks for the facts and statistics! Those mean more than opinion, of course. I'm waiting for Mr. Burrill's response.
Amy Goodman is Amazing!
Also, the Canadian government has lost control of Ottawa to the extreme right that infiltrated the "Freedom Convoy." Here's a substack blog with all the info:
https://theline.substack.com/p/dispatch-from-the-ottawa-front-sloly
This one you’re reading now is also where I will recount the strangest, most concerning incident I experienced in Ottawa — one that explains why I think the police have been so reluctant to act.
They know what they're up against, to be frank. Most of us don't. And at least one person is trying to tell us.
The chief is very political. I say that with no disrespect. Becoming the chief of a major police force isn't something that happens because you catch the most bad guys. It happens because you're good at working your way up through the power structures of a very particular institution. Sloly talks like a politician. But if you listen closely, and if you follow along across his briefings, you start to see a theme. From the moment he first mentioned that there might not be a policing solution to this protest, and hinted that we need the armed forces, he's been signalling to the public that Ottawa, as a city, has lost control of itself. That's a blunt description, but as I noted in a Twitter thread after a pretty remarkably stark Ottawa Police Services Board meeting on the weekend, Sloly was clear: the city needs to be rescued. It has lost control, it is outnumbered, and it cannot fix this problem with the resources on hand.
Also, there’s this: there's another element of the protest that's nothing at all like a festival.
You may have heard reports of a secondary encampment that is well removed from the main protest sites around Parliament Hill. I certainly had. It has been described in different reports as either a logistics area or some kind of staging ground for protesters. It is a parking lot outside of a baseball diamond, RCGT Park, right next to a large Marriott hotel, and though not far from Parliament, it’s well removed from the main sites.
This site, for lack of a better term, has been fortified. There are many trucks parked in the parking lot, but some of them have been arranged to form outer walls. These walls have been augmented with wooden sawhorses and what looked to me to be stacked pallets of some kind. There was an entrance with a tent marked Reception (see photo, below). I wish I could give you a better description of the site, or tell you what was inside, but as soon as I began to approach it on foot, someone very quickly fell into step behind me. A series of others, four or five, met me before I made it to the reception tent. We chatted briefly, and I got the distinct impression that it would be way, way better for me to be somewhere else. I left.
Later that day, by chance, I found out that a friend of mine had been in town and had decided to go check it out for herself. She told me that she was able to get inside by slipping in with a larger group. Once she started taking pictures, she immediately began to be followed, and she was tailed until she left shortly thereafter. She wasn’t harmed or threatened, and agreed with my description of the residents as organized, polite, and very clear in their desire for you to leave. She had a much better view of the entire area, and reports that the perimeter was pretty secure. Where it wasn't, she said, there were small groups standing on guard. Her impression matched my own entirely: this group is disciplined, organized and on alert for outsiders.
Still, each call I made went similarly: the police are very much aware of the site, and they are very worried about the presence of a hard-right-wing, organized faction that isn't there to protest mandates and vaccine passports, but to directly create conflict with the government. This hard-right element probably includes some non-Canadians, here for the party. The broader complaints of the protesters are a cover for the group seeking open conflict. Most of the convoy protesters aren’t part of this smaller, nastier group, nor linked to it in any overt way. Many of them will think any concern about it at all is just some MSM lamestream media conspiracy.
My government and security sources do not agree. What’s happening in Ottawa, they were clear, is two separate events happening in tandem: there is a broadly non-violent (to date) group of Canadians with assorted COVID-related gripes, ranging from the somewhat justified to totally frickin’ insane. But that larger group, which has knocked Ottawa and too many of our leaders into what my colleague Jen Gerson so perfectly described as “stun-fucked stasis,” is now providing a kind of (mostly) unwitting cover to a cadre of seasoned street brawlers whose primary goal is to further erode the legitimacy of the state — not just the city of Ottawa, or Ontario or Canada, but of democracies generally.
Some of them are ideologues, others just grifters, but they’re real, and they’re in Ottawa. Maybe not in that parking lot. I certainly didn’t get the chance to take any names. But local officials know they’re out and about, and are worried that any move they make will trigger an incident that can easily result in dead cops, dead truckers and delighted far-right agitators.
If that all sounds alarmist, I felt that way too. So I contacted three other sources, including one who’s superbly well placed, and ran this scenario by them. Two agreed. One suggested I’m actually being too optimistic.
So yeah. The bouncy castles and the Fuck Trudeau signs aren’t really the story here. And if you’re wondering why no one wants to act, it’s because they’re afraid of what they’ll be unleashing.
Thank you, TC. Matt Gurney’s reporting has cleared up a few things. And made Fox News support even more egregious. Their support of the truckers sounds like a cover for the odd compound set up like a right wing headquarters in that parking lot. That is what caught my attention. Like it’s an alternate “government” site planning the coup d’etat.
Another attack on NATO partner.
Bingo. The Q and Anti-Vax pro-Trump contingent are nursed at the teat of Putin’s misinformation campaign.
Brilliant analysis. A fascist anti democratic nihilistic effort to damage liberal democracy. Is there dark Putin oligarchy money somewhere?
this is not sweet news, but rather terrifying
the mayhem that could be unleashed...
I have been reading everything I can get my hands on. This and his previous article are the best description of this past week I have seen. The first week, when the bullying, Confederate and Nazi flag waving etc. was not good for their image so has been muted.
Protesters at Couts Sweetwater posted on Twitter asking the Trumps to come and unite Canada and USA.
Of course the Republican Jesus Christians on both sides of the border are solidly on side.
TC. Great post. If not very optimistic. Thanks.
Canadian government is taking measured steps. “Injunction granted to prevent protesters from blocking Ambassador Bridge” “Protesters blocking one of Canada’s busiest border crossings were dealt a one-two punch Friday, as a court granted an injunction banning their blockade and Ontario’s premier declared a state of emergency that would subject them to major fines.”
https://globalnews.ca/news/8612352/ambassador-bridge-blockade-injunction-ontario-court/
Protesters on the bridge are defying the injunction
Which is why I said “measured steps”. The injunction went into effect at midnight. Some hefty fines, do they have any teeth? Ottawa asking for help, Trudeau saying Ottawa could be doing more. Meanwhile, 21 year old woman is the heroine for many, with an injunction that did work 😁: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/zexi-li-ottawa-injunction-trucker-protest-convoy-1.6344503
Wouldn’t this also be considered an international terror incident?
It certainly appears that chaos reigns, which is a cause for terror in many? Not sure the legal definition of terror, but many people have fled their homes to get away from it.
They are blocking an international bridge though. Imagine if it were BLM.
Sad marker of effectiveness in today’s world of social media: when someone sets up a fake account in your name, as done with Zexi Li:
https://twitter.com/emilietaman/status/1492527748761460741?s=21
I’ve seen this happen to others. Apparently some people have way too much time on their hands. Baffled as to why.
Yep. Sitting in your truck for ten days and you can’t even blow your horn. My heart breaks for them.
With that said though, this blockaded bridge is being dealt with nothing like another one was by the Canadian government. Is the difference 30 years of evolution or is it white nationalism? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_Crisis
I suspect the latter but violence and dead people would play into the hands of the far right around the world
However, since Canadian towing companies are refusing to move the trucks it sounds like Michigan governor Whitmer has said she will get them moved. The auto industry is being harmed and pitting the Teamsters against the UAW is not going to be pretty if it comes to that.
One tow truck operator moved an illegal shed for the organizers and received death threats from protesters as a result.
Thank you, TC. It's just not the time for us to have our heads stuck in the sand. I appreciate this information.
Interesting post. You mentioned the Police Chief being political, as it is a necessary companion to ambition. I, too, mean this with no disrespect. I wonder if also part of his signaling that the police have lost control of this situation (or at least must proceed with tigger-hair caution) is because like in the US, the police are divided themselves ideologically. This is what for me makes our current moment so vulnerable to violence. We have had over twenty years of failing war, not to mention our debacle in Viet Nam. All those military trained, PTSD effected, disillusioned former soldiers seem to fill the ranks of law enforcement. A culture of Might-Makes-Right seems to be the pernicious undercurrent to these institutions. “Protect and Serve” seems like a joke. The Canadian Police Chief and the Political Leadership in Ottawa seem to know how close they are to lighting a match in a fireworks factory. And that fireworks factory seems to span the globe right now.
My wonder is how many law enforcement officers will flip and side with the rabble-rousers? And isn’t that the defining reason we are in this more close-to-home violence situation? Law Enforcement knows if they make their ranks chose a side it may not be for Democracy? There are many who want autocracy, especially because they believe autocracy will favor their pawn-efforts, even though that is not the way history usually works out. But they may be willing to blow up the system, because why not? The disciplined group near the Marriot Hotel by Parliament seem to be the group to watch.
'The authorities have stopped 500 vehicles outside the French capital ahead of an anti-mandate protest'
'French police say they intercepted around 500 vehicles trying to enter Paris as part of an anti-mandate 'Freedom Convoy' protest on Saturday.'
'Several groups of protesters who took their cue from the Canadian truckers were stopped at three checkpoints outside the French capital. The authorities issued almost 300 tickets to the participants.'
'Ahead of the planned protest, police deployed thousands of officers, water cannons, and, for the first time since the Yellow Vest protests in late 2018, armored personnel carriers. An order was issued prohibiting the protests in Paris over fears that the demonstration could result in "public order disturbances." Courts sided with the authorities, rejecting two appeals against the ban.'
'Paris Police Chief Didier Lallement said the authorities had dozens of tow trucks at their disposal that would help "put an end to any blockage." Speaking to France 2 TV on Friday, Prime Minister Jean Castex warned that the French government would be "very firm" should the protesters "block traffic or if they try to block the capital." Castex added that while the "right to demonstrate and to have an opinion are a constitutionally guaranteed right in our republic and in our democracy," that right does not apply to blocking traffic.'
https://www.canadastandard.com/news/272291192/police-intercept-freedom-convoy-headed-for-paris
Thanks for this info, TC. Ominous.
Wouldn’t drones outfitted with Covid aerosolized and dumped on these encampments do some damage? Only half kidding here.
Sewage samples taken as the convoy crossed Canada indicates that is not necessary as they are bringing it with them. The next few weeks should see a major outbreak in Ottawa.
And then they can use Canada’s health care system. And do it without irony.
"Sewage samples taken as the convoy crossed Canada "
Is there a source for this data?
One of the Canadian dailies. Can't recall which. Couple weeks ago
IMHO, USA has been similarly paralyzed for some time for the same reason; “no one wants to act, it’s because they’re afraid of what they’ll be unleashing.”
This is downright scary. Thanks for the link.
I've always wondered about Canadians and their possible affinity for right wing ideology. When I lived at Canyon Lake, a Canadian doctor and his wife ran a "clinic" and a small RV park down the hill from us. They called it a "clinic" but the only time I went there (to get a tetanus shot) I was told that no one there knew how to give shots. The RV park was inhabited by only Canadians, who did not associate with anyone in our subdivision. They were called "winter Texans" or "snowbirds" because they came and stayed during the winter and then went back to Canada during the summer. I later met some of these "snowbirds" at Gruene Dance Hall (adjacent to New Braunfels) where they would come in droves to hear a certain Country Western singer who played songs they all knew by heart and could dance the two-step with their mates. New Braunfels is home to one of the most vile white supremacist leaders and his minions - his last name is Ceh and he led the cavalry called the "Trump Train" that tried to ambush the Biden/Harris' campaign bus on IH35 before the election. New Braunfels, as all know, was settled by Germans and is still VERY much a German town with enough KKK members to cause it to be on the radar of the FBI. So, why would "winter Texans" settle in this town every single winter? I always wondered what drew them.
Canada has its share of extreme right wingers. This "Freedom Caravan" is about bringing them mainstream and allowing more of them out of the woodwork. It is the next 10 years that worry me, especially if USA goes Republican
I agree. And we now know what happens when they come out of the woodwork - they just get more emboldened and dangerous.
Thank you for this chilling share.
And as soon as someone dies you have a martyr for freedom, like what's her name Jan 6th. But I agree with you. It is time.
Did u think it was scary when the police were to afraid to act during the BLM riots?
Anne Applebaum answers the question “Why would Putin want to invade Ukraine?” with
“Because he wants democracy to fail, and not just in Ukraine.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/putin-ukraine-democracy/621465/
One of my most trusted sources: Anne Applebaum is an exemplary journalist.
He also believes he’s entitled to Ukraine.
💩-tin also wants jurisdiction & the leverage that comes with that pipeline. I find it interesting that there is indications if Russian escalation as things are heating up with trump and the investigation into the coop, & the organization/financing of the convoy blockage. Perhaps 💩-tin wants the US to fight a war on two fronts?
He wants a lot of things he can’t have so like many spoiled brat bullies he will probably go to war to get them—I don’t think he cares at all about all the people that will get killed. He’s had that great KGB training.
Darlene, you win today’s Best Use of Emoji award. 🏆
The goal is to break nato and the EU. Russia will never be part of the EU as long as it’s non democratic and a menace. Putin gets less pressure at home “if more of the world, especially the US is more like Russia.”
Destabilize and break the UK from the EU. Try the same with the US. So that they are both unwilling to lead and organize resistance to a Ukrainian invasion. Do it all via Facebook and Twitter so the other side doesn’t realize what has and is happening.
And now they have Rumbler, without any regulations to dampen their propaganda. (Excuse my fat fingers it’s Rumble without the r)
Does FB have any regulations? Some of the crazy stuff, I keep seeing hasn't changed.
Ted, I’m no tech expert, but IMHO the spread of propaganda is far worse than the Covid pandemic in terms of lives that will be lost as our Earth burns.
“Unlike the past two election cycles, when Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others worked with federal, state and local election officials to take down election-related misinformation, it’s unclear if the new apps and sites would take similar measures.
Gettr and Rumble did not respond to questions by publication time.
It’s also unclear if election officials will have any leverage in trying to knock down misinformation on the new platforms. In recent election cycles, officials from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Election Assistance Commission, as well as state elections officials, actively pushed back on false claims percolating on social media platforms.” https://rollcall.com/2022/01/18/rise-of-right-wing-apps-seen-worsening-midterm-disinformation/
He is also testing NATO's resolve to move against him; Putin is praying for an "incident" that will allow him to (ostensibly) invade Ukraine...however he is also ensuring, via his subversives planted on the Ukraine side of the border, to manufacture a staged "incident", in case a real "provocation" doesn't occur.
Getting his boy into the Oval Office pumped up Putin’s larger than life ego. Giddy with confidence he assumes he will keep winning.
The first invasion, the Russians concocted a false story of Ukrainian soldiers crucifying a Russian speaking boy in a border town. So of course the Russians had to “rescue” that town.
Thank you for the link. I’m now a subscriber. This article is a good companion to historical info that we rely on from HCR’s letters and brilliance. My grandparents left-escaped- Kiev in 1909, Russian Jews who lived with fear, hate and tyranny for generations. Some other relatives stayed and came in the 1980s but while they waited years for visas they were prohibited from working in their fields of science and medicine. They were never able to reconnect to their past training and education. But their children live in America now. I’m grateful for my privilege and their sacrifice. And sad that people are still escaping dictators and trauma in this modern age. We absolutely see the link between the TFG and the history of Putin’s rise to power. Or is it Putin and TFG’s rise to power? What ignorant and dangerous followers he has gathered on his path to power as a USA President and now a has been supported by assorted alternative press and political hacks and despots. Of course the old adage, “If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention” applies but…
Thank you for becoming a member. Your post is so important. My daughter in law is from Iraq and her sister in law was a dentist back in Iraq. She first had to learn Engish before going to medical school here. I have friends who have the same issues. It should be easier for those who come with needed skills to be able to use those skills here more easily.
Here's some news a little more serious. From TPM:
Orange County Scientology lawyer Leigh Dundas, who was one of the main organizers of anti-masking and anti-vaccination protests in the county this past year, is now working to bring the Canadian "Freedom Convoy" protest to the US. As with all Scientologists, she's crazy, but in her case she's also extremely dangerous.
Now, Dundas is leading a different kind of charge: the effort to bring Canada’s anti-vax trucker protests to the United States.
Politico first reported the involvement of Dundas and her non-profit, Freedom Fighter Nation, on Wednesday. TPM reviewed Telegram chats focused on organizing a U.S. convoy in which organizers referred to Dundas and her nonprofit as part of the movement’s leadership, saying that they are playing a role in planning upcoming rallies.
Dundas claimed in a little-noticed interview published on far-right video sharing network Rumble that she first got involved several weeks ago when a group of Canadian truckers invited her to help with their protest.
“We started working with them to identify the strategic border crossings and how we could support them from the United States side and also what this looked like,” Dundas said in the video, published Jan. 31.
Now, she and others are working to ignite a similar series of anti-vax protests in the U.S., starting with a rally planned for California’s Coachella Valley in early March that’s been promoted across several of the main social media profiles for the would-be American convoy.
Over the past two years, Dundas’ appearances illustrate the nexus of right-wing activism around anti-COVID measures, Jan. 6, and, now, the movement of truckers aimed at snarling up supply chains and bringing an end to vaccine requirements. It’s a jumble of different threads with Dundas popping up in each, promoting both conspiracy theories and her own involvement in organizing around them.
In particular, Dundas has had a Forrest Gump-like habit of popping up at COVID-related imbroglios. First in Orange County, and most recently on Capitol Hill.
When the pandemic first began, Dundas was one of a group that succeeded in expelling a local Orange County official from office over COVID mandates that, TPM pointed out at the time, were non-existent.
That’s also when Tony Ortega, a former Village Voice editor-in-chief and current independent journalist who covers Scientology, first noticed Dundas.
He cottoned on to Dundas’ connections to scientology, specifically as an attorney for what he described as a front group operated by a scientologist chiropractor. Then, in January 2021, he was surprised to receive a tip placing her outside the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“You stand the hell up,” Dundas said in a video of a speech she gave in D.C. around the time of the insurrection, posted to YouTube by Ortega. “Because you are far better off living a life on your feet and being prepared to die on your feet than living a life on your damned knees.”
Ortega told TPM that that was Dundas’s last U.S. appearance for a while. Social media posts reviewed by TPM place her in Mexico not long after.
“Right after that event, she went right down to Mexico. It seemed like she knew she stepped over the line,” Ortega added. “There’s an enclave being built by scientologists down there.”
Dundas has since returned to the U.S. She appeared at an October 2021 conference in Salt Lake City devoted to COVID denial, the Big Lie, and other issues that loom large in the QAnon universe.
In the Jan. 31 Rumble video, Dundas discussed an earlier plan for mass, anti-vax protests: a so-called “National Walkout” to be held in November 2021, meant as a general strike against employers with vaccine mandates.
That effort did not catch on. It did lead to some notoriety, after a car hit five people trying to control a protest that Dundas organized on the Golden Gate bridge in support of the walkout.
Later in the Jan. 31 Rumble video, Dundas said that the Canadian truckers reached out to her after hearing about her role in the walkout.
She likened the truckers’ movement to a 2014 episode in Thailand, where, as she told it, farmers used their equipment to bring a “coup d’etat” to an end.
“For whatever reason, god had me on the ground in February 2014 when the Thailand farmers did a similar move — they blockaded or threatened to blockade and make an island of Bangkok International Airport, as a way to bring the coup to an end,” she said. “They were having a coup d’etat. There was no definitive winner coming out of it.”
(The story seems to conflate events in 2014 — a planned February farmers protest that was subsequently called off, and the successful May military coup. Dundas has said she was in Thailand working on anti-human trafficking issues.)
Dundas added that it ended when “much like the Canada truck drivers,” Thai farmers drove large trucks to block off Bangkok’s main international airport.
“That was it — no more coup,” she said. “I had been waiting for anybody in a first-world country to do that over the past couple years as things got more tyrannical, and really since March 2020.”
The number of loonies with money is legion. Bruce Springsteen said it best way back there “When you let that genie out of the bottle - bigotry - racism - intolerance - they don’t go back in the bottle that easily, if they go back in at all. Whether it’s a rise in hate crimes, people feeling they have license to speak and behave in ways that were previously considered un-American and are un-American. That’s what he’s appealing to. My fears are that those things find a place in ordinary, civil society.” Which will be neither ordinary or civil from that point on.
They are not loonies. Power grabbing puppet masters around the world are bringing chaos to dominate with a very right wing agenda. Next time the US tries to invade a country let’s remember what they did in Chile in 1972: The USA fed a trucker strike to bring down democratic elected President Allende to put a dictator that brought murder to Chile and all South America
Argentina has 30,000 people who disappeared on a plan organized by the School of the Americas in the United States
Where can I read about this? Any recommendations?
Start with Heather Cox Richardsons footnotes: https://www.nytimes.com/1974/09/20/archives/cia-is-linked-to-strikes-in-chile-that-beset-allende-intelligence.html
Thank you
“How Civil wars start and how to stop them” Barbara Water
TC, we hear endless noise about (evil) Russian oligarchs, those at the heart of the regime, those co-opted (or else...), we don't seem ever to have heard enough about the dug-in dog-in-the-manger oligarchs who've kept Ukraine ungovernable... and while we hear plenty about Q, about the politicians, the media, the stirrers, the storm-troopers... and not about their key operatives, the big lobbies that pull strings in Washington, we never hear enough about those who pay for all the chaos and subversion ("legitimate discourse") designed to make America as weak and ungovernable as Ukraine: America's very own activist oligarchs.
Nor do we hear enough about how they do it...
And when it comes to supply chains, don't the paymasters and their discreetly hidden pipelines feeding finance to all these subversive forces count for more than the armies and equipment of the servants at their command?
Jane Mayer. “Dark Money”
Thanks, sounds as though this book is all about the very heart of darkness...
When at the age of 8-9 I attended a Dominican convent school near Capetown, the Irish nuns would keep interjecting the words "By the Powers of Darkness"... And of course, I wondered what these could be...
(We couldn't have nuns exclaiming "What the Deuce!" could we?)
If we weren't aware of those Powers before, we've no excuse for ignorance now...
Peter, If you look, you will find that I have provided info linking connections between social media (Ruble and others), Trump, Thiel, Fox News, et al, to the right-wing, global truckers movement. The following refers to what may be canny about the Biden administration's dealing with the Ukraine/Putin business.
'U.S. Battles Putin by Disclosing His Next Possible Moves'
'Declassified information is part of a campaign, backed by Britain, to complicate what officials say are Russia’s plans to invade Ukraine.'
The United States hopes that disclosing the plans of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia regarding Ukraine will disrupt them, perhaps delaying an invasion and buying more time for diplomacy.
'The United States hopes that disclosing the plans of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia regarding Ukraine will disrupt them, perhaps delaying an invasion and buying more time for diplomacy.'
Feb. 12, 2022, 10:23 a.m. ET
'WASHINGTON — After decades of getting schooled in information warfare by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the United States is trying to beat the master at his own game.'
'In recent weeks, the Biden administration has detailed the movement of Russian special operation forces to Ukraine’s borders, exposed a Russian plan to create a video of a faked atrocity as a pretext for an invasion, outlined Moscow’s war plans, warned that an invasion would result in possibly thousands of deaths and hinted that Russian officers had doubts about Mr. Putin.'
'Then, on Friday, Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, told reporters at the White House that the United States was seeing signs of Russian escalation and that there was a “credible prospect” of immediate military action. Other officials said the announcement was prompted by new intelligence that signaled an invasion could begin as soon as Wednesday.'
'All told, the extraordinary series of disclosures — unfolding almost as quickly as information is collected and assessed — has amounted to one of the most aggressive releases of intelligence by the United States since the Cuban missile crisis, current and former officials say.'
'It is an unusual gambit, in part because Mr. Biden has repeatedly made clear he has no intention of sending U.S. troops to defend Ukraine. In effect, the administration is warning the world of an urgent threat, not to make the case for a war but to try to prevent one.'
'The hope is that disclosing Mr. Putin’s plans will disrupt them, perhaps delaying an invasion and buying more time for diplomacy, or even giving Mr. Putin a chance to reconsider the political, economic and human costs of an invasion.'
'At the same time, Biden administration officials said they had a narrower and more realistic goal: They want to make it more difficult for Mr. Putin to justify an invasion with lies, undercutting his standing on the global stage and building support for a tougher response.'
'Intelligence agencies, prodded by the White House, have declassified information, which in turn has been briefed to Congress, shared with reporters and discussed by Pentagon and State Department spokesmen.'
'Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, with President Biden, has shown a willingness to declassify information to complicate Russia’s planning.'
'But the disclosures are complicated by history. Before the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration released intelligence that officials said justified pre-emptive action, including purported intercepts of Iraqi military conversations, photos of mobile biological weapons labs and statements accusing Baghdad of building a fleet of drones to launch a chemical attack on the United States. The material was all wrong, reliant on sources who lied, incorrect interpretations of Iraq’s actions and senior officials who looked at raw intelligence and saw what they wanted to see.'
'But this situation, American officials say, is very different. Washington’s claims about Russia’s troop buildup have been confirmed by commercial satellite imagery of a quality previously unavailable. The details of Moscow’s secret disinformation plots are in line with the Kremlin’s propaganda campaigns that play out on social media platforms and have been tracked by independent researchers.'
'Most important, the officials said, there is a fundamental distinction between Iraq in 2003 and Ukraine in 2022. “In Iraq, intelligence was used and deployed from this very podium to start a war,” Mr. Sullivan said on Friday. “We are trying to stop a war.”
'The last time Russia moved against Ukraine, in 2014, intelligence officials blocked the Obama administration from sharing what they knew. But the Biden administration has studied those mistakes. The new disclosures reflect the influence of Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, and William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, who have shown a willingness to declassify information in an effort to disrupt Russian planning, administration officials said.'
“We have learned a lot, especially since 2014, about how Russia uses the information space as part of its overall security and military apparatus,” said Emily J. Horne, the spokeswoman for the National Security Council. “And we have learned a lot about how to deny them some impact in that space.”
'One U.S. intelligence official said that when the country’s spy agencies have information that could help the world make better judgments about Russian activity, it should be released, as long as the government can avoid exposing how the information was collected or who passed it along.'
'It is, according to some strategists, a full-fledged information battle.'
“I think it is great,” said Beth Sanner, a former top intelligence official who regularly briefed President Donald J. Trump. “My guess is that these disclosures are freaking the Kremlin and the security services out. And, more important, it can narrow Putin’s options and make him think twice.”
'The Kremlin has been on a full propaganda push since last year, not just in Russia but also in the separatist regions of eastern Ukraine, and even in Kyiv, the capital. Moscow has accused Ukraine of plotting a genocide against ethnic Russians and denounced Ukrainians as Nazi sympathizers. Russian officials have also accused Ukraine and the United States of hatching secret plots to justify an intervention or invasion of separatist-controlled territory.' (NYTimes) See link below.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/12/us/politics/russia-information-putin-biden.html
Here's an open door to endorse consensus for peace and environmental health/sanity:
BREAKING: Russia Gains Two Vast New Protected Areas
At a time of rising geopolitical tensions, this milestone also shows the possibilities of cooperation and joint achievement between U.S. and Russian scientists and conservationists.
https://wildsalmoncenter.org/2022/02/10/russia-gains-two-vast-new-protected-areas/?emci=fada6b05-af8a-ec11-a507-281878b83d8a&emdi=85d610c3-c38a-ec11-a507-281878b83d8a&ceid=4124021
"In a huge step forward for the stronghold protection strategy developed over the past two decades by Wild Salmon Center and our partners in Russia, the government of Khabarovsky-Krai officially created two massive new protected areas on the Tugur and Maia watersheds—a combined area of 3.7 million acres.
"The creation of the Tugursky (Middendorf) and Maisky Reserves will be a powerful tool to safeguard these systems' priceless biodiversity—including salmon and giant taimen—against expanding threats from logging, mining, and industrial development in the Russian Far East.
“"There aren’t too many places like this on Earth,” says WSC President & CEO Guido Rahr. “These rivers are capable of growing salmonids that surpass 100 pounds, and they support amazing wildlife: Steller’s sea eagles, Blakiston’s fish owls, wolves, brown bears, moose, Manchurian elk, and dozens of other species.” "
RIVER TIGERS
"And “River Tigers” a 14-minute documentary film from Wild Salmon Center, Maser Films and Yonder Content, puts you on the old MI-9 Soviet helicopter to this land before time.
"The film follows a trio of adventuring fishermen to the Tugur River, the crown jewel of taimen strongholds but one nonetheless under threat. American conservationist Guido Rahr, explorer-scientist Mikhail Skopets, and Russian industrial magnate Alexander Abramov converge on the river in an attempt to find the elusive fish, to unlock its mysteries, and figure out a way to protect this singular place among the harsh realities of life in the Wild West of the Russian Far East.
“"River Tigers” is about the passions and the unlikely friendships that drive conservation in this last frontier.
It’s a trip to one of the last truly wild places on Earth.
And it’s about the thrill of the hunt."
https://vimeo.com/673321342?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=4251426
Exactly right on all points.
TC,
Do you have any idea what Dundas and nuts like her hope to gain from generating chaos?
Do they think that, somehow, they will profit from it monetarily, or gain power?
Because, once true chaos starts, the random outcomes that can occur don't necessarily favor the nuts themselves or anyone in particular.
What does Sydney Powell want? Dundas has the backing of Scientologists, so no want of money I’d think.
Powell wanted to be appointed “special counsel” so she could investigate false election fraud crimes, u know full fill her childhood dream of becoming a Stalinist show trial lawyer.
Dundas is a Scientologist, ergo, a crazy bi.... er witch. I mean it seriously. She is literally not in touch with reality.
Smh... just when one thinks this country can't get any crazier... and who knows how many more like Dundas are lurking in the shadows...
Far, far too many.
Also appalling about these folks is they’re couching their terrorism as “human rights protests”. My guess is that US police forces won’t be as nice as Canadians are. Except these guys are white…
Trudeau did not sound as though he was prepared to "be nice" on the clip I saw this morning. Personally, I hope he hits the the lawless idiots with everything the RCP can muster.
She's probably close friends with Marjorie 3-names.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/leigh-dundas-truckers-january-6
What an expose, TC!
Thank you for the reporting, TC.
DUNDAS, RUMBLE THIEL, TRUMP, look as though they are CONNECTED. Threads, yes TC, but I don't know how jumbled. See the following:
'Dec 14 (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Donald Trump's social media venture said on Tuesday it has entered into a technology and cloud-services agreement with Canadian video platform Rumble Inc.
As part of the agreement, Rumble will deliver video and streaming for TRUTH Social, the proposed social media app from Trump.
Rumble was launched in 2013 by tech entrepreneur Chris Pavlovski as an alternative YouTube-style site, and is popular among U.S. conservatives seeking an alternative to Big Tech. Its top trending videos include those from conservative commentators Dan Bongino and Dinesh D’Souza, as well as former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon. It is backed by venture capitalist Peter Thiel and author-turned-U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance through Narya Capital.
On Dec. 1 Rumble said it would go public by merging with blank-check firm CF Acquisition Corp VI (CFVI.O) at an initial enterprise value of $2.1 billion. The combined company will be called Rumble and is expected to list on the Nasdaq.
Former Trump administration lawyer Michael Ellis joined Rumble in November as its first-ever general counsel and corporate secretary. read more
https://www.reuters.com/technology/trumps-social-media-venture-partners-with-canadas-rumble-2021-12-14/
Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance Invest in Rumble Video Platform Popular on Political Right
Backing from conservative venture capitalists comes amid push for alternative social-media channels with looser rules on speech
https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-j-d-vance-invest-in-rumble-video-platform-popular-on-political-right-11621447661
Thiel was one of Facebook’s first large investors, investing $500,000 in the company in 2004. In 2016, Thiel voiced enthusiastic but qualified support for Trump, describing Trump’s comments about women as “clearly offensive and inappropriate,” but suggesting that Trump would help make the U.S. more prosperous by reducing deficits and taking the U.S. out of “undeclared wars.” In 2021, Thiel donated $10 million to groups backing the campaigns of Trump-supported Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters and Hillbilly Elegy author and venture capitalist J.D. Vance, an Ohio Senate candidate who has fought to rebrand himself as pro-Trump despite previous harshly critical comments. In January, Thiel and Donald Trump Jr. co-hosted two fundraisers for Harriet Hageman, a Republican primary challenger to Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who on Friday was censured by the Republican National Committee for serving on a House committee investigating the January 6 riot. Thiel also invested in Rumble, a video sharing platform that bills itself as “immune to cancel culture.”
SURPRISING FACT
Thiel’s company Founders Fund invested more than $10 million in Boldend, a “cyber warfare” startup that developed tools for hacking Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp, a source familiar with the company told Forbes.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharysmith/2022/02/07/peter-thiel-leaving-meta-board-to-focus-on-pro-trump-politics/
Rumble this year secured an investment from Narya Capital, Peter Thiel and Colt Ventures. TORONTO, CANADA AND NEW YORK, NY – December 1, 2021 – Rumble Inc. (“Rumble” or “the Company”), the neutral video platform, and CF Acquisition Corp.Dec 2, 2021
'Rumble, a fast-growing social media business with a strong following among conservative Americans, aims to take itself public next year in a SPAC deal that could value the company at over $2 billion, a transaction similar to the one former President Trump has envisioned for his own right-wing media firm.'
'To go public, Rumble intends to merge with an investment company initially created by Cantor Fitzgerald, a decades-old Wall Street bank. The deal would leave Rumble with $300 million in cash, the company said in a statement announcing the transaction on Wednesday evening. It hopes to complete the process by the second quarter of next year.'
'The Cantor Fitzgerald investment vehicle, which already trades publicly under the CFVI ticker, saw its shares rise Thursday, increasing by nearly 25% to $12.'
'Rumble, which was founded in 2013, bills itself as a “true neutral platform,” but has become a popular site among Republicans over the last two years as criticism of existing social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter has increased among conservatives, who say they unfairly limit speech.'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharysmith/2022/02/07/peter-thiel-leaving-meta-board-to-focus-on-pro-trump-politics/
Subscribers, This movement is spreading to New Zealand, France, the USA and more. Fox News is egging it on here and what about Dark Money? This isn't staying in Canada. It threatens the economy and democracy.
Once again, Fox News stokes a protest against a Democratic president
Ottawa citizens go to work as truckers block the streets near Parliament Hill. (Washington Pos)
By Philip Bump
National correspondent
Yesterday at 1:38 p.m. EST
'The story of the protests that have upended the Canadian capital of Ottawa is not yet fully written. That’s true in part because the protest — or, as authorities have called it, the occupation — is ongoing; it’s not yet clear how it ends. It’s also true because all of the details of its genesis have likely not yet emerged. How did it come about? Who was involved in planning and amplifying the idea? Such details often take months to come to light.'
'If, as seems likely, a similar truck-centered protest unfolds in the United States, that last question will have some obvious immediate answers. The American right has been very active in supporting the events in Ottawa and, often, in calling for something similar here. And when we talk about elements of the American right with a disproportionate ability to be heard, we’re talking about the hosts of Fox News’s prime-time programming.'
Sign up for How To Read This Chart, a weekly data newsletter from Philip Bump
'In the past month, Fox News has mentioned the truckers or Ottawa 2½ times as often as CNN and five times as often as MSNBC. Analysis by Matthew Gertz of the watchdog group Media Matters estimates that the network has spent more than 10 hours covering the story since the middle of January. The shows on which it has been mentioned the most, according to analysis of closed-captioning data? Those hosted by Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity.'
“It’s hard to overstate the historical significance of what we’re watching right here,” Carlson said on his program Thursday night. “The Canadian trucker convoy is the single most successful human rights protest in a generation.”
'At another point, Carlson reported that American truckers were planning their own convoy. The graphic over his shoulder read, “Here It Comes.” See links for this sorry and link to CNN for its story below.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/11/once-again-fox-news-stokes-protest-against-democratic-president/
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/09/media/right-wing-media-canadian-truckers-reliable-sources/index.html
ADDENDUM: Isn't the timing curious, synchronized with the heat on Ukraine?
I don't know, Peter. I think the thrust here to hurt Biden/Democrats' ability to pass build back agenda, to tie up sectors of the economy as all part of the right-wing moves to pull down democracies.
That, and that Facebook stinks.
Thank you, Fern, for spelling this much out.
I made no mention of the sources of finance for the propaganda that secured Brexit in the UK, both known sources and the ultimately secret ones behind many of those. We've seen only the beginning of the chaos to which that development can lead.
As for what we're seeing now in Ottawa -- to the US what Ukraine is for Russia -- may this not be a dress rehearsal for other such scenarios worldwide? A growing series of well orchestrated disturbances designed to bring on something like General Pinochet's overthrow of the Allende regime... on an incomparably vaster scale.
And while Allende's was a socialist experiment, this time the target is democracy itself.
Curious the use of the words Truth and Social for lies and the destruction of society...
It seems, however, that the Koch brothers want nothing more to do with this kind of banditry...
It all depends on Koch's, one living brother left, cost/benefit calculus.
Maybe they realize that this Frankenstein monster can’t be controlled.
🤢
🐍
🤮
🛠️
Will such a convoy help the anti-democracy movement? If responsible leaders act responsibly, it will hurt. How many autoworkers are now laud off because of the Canadian protest? Has that made them more, or less, sympathetic to the protesters’ “cause?” I’d say, less. And if there’s a similar demonstration here, it should have the same result. Remember all those people who want to get back to “normal?” They aren’t going to agree with something like what has happened in Canada, unless the authorities here overreach.
Responsible leaders can nip it in the bud, like authorities did to prevent trucks from entering Paris--as reported elsewhere in these comments by Fern McBride. Like we learned after 9/11 about how jets can become weaponized.
Conservatives in Canada are against it. Not sure how businesses here would take to it either. I’d say not too well, especially after the past two years. And I read there are children in the convoy as well. Tell me about “human rights”.
Dundas is dangerous and ignorant. She equates protests in countries that are trying to move from poverty or unfair practices or dictatorship (Thailand), people risking their lives and protesting for some form of freedom and democracy to policial pawns in their trucks hoping to shut down a democracy. How can she compare that kind of survival with the misguided anti-vaccine and anti-maskers crowd? These protestors are knowingly or ignorantly working for the extreme right. Same as The red hats on this side of the border. I’ve seen survival protests including in Guadalajara, Mexico in 2008 when protestors closed down a highway for hours to make a point that their sugarcane industry was subject to unfair labor practices. They couldn’t work for poor wages while the owners raked in a fortune. We, as tourists, didn’t get where we were going that day, but we became more than tourists.
I always thought (from experiencing them) that "ignorantscientologist" was one word.
Irenie, We don't know her connections, funding sources, and, we don't know her level of intelligence. I bet there is plenty concerning Dundas that we are ignorant of.
Yes, that’s true and I am somewhat generalizing from what I’ve read.. Not every fact. But the source TPM https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/leigh-dundas-truckers-january-6
cited by original poster is informative, and that she gave an inflammatory speech in Washington and has been stirring the pot for a long time.
She’s “an evangelical attorney…” and here’s a quote from one of her speeches at a Washington DC rally, 1/5/21:
“We would be well within our rights to take any alleged American who acted in a turncoat fashion and sold us out and committed treason — we would be well within our right to take them out back and shoot them or hang them,” Dundas thundered, speaking from a stage”
I would say she’s dangerous.
Look at the hatred, harm deaths and destruction that cretin, Orange monstruous ignoramus has inflicted!
Chilling
The evil right will hijack, skew, lie and pull any propaganda trick imaginable to impress the orange arse. As to Rupert’s motive in Supporting these big rig desperados, power and greed
And in Oz. https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/news/antivaccine-mandate-ralliers-potentially-target-vaccine-hub-hosting-childrens-event/news-story/9e98221eab0c5436f122209a38d56102
Murdoch.
TPM = Talking Points Memo
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/
Arrrrgggghhhh
Parenthetical question, TCinLA -- Who or What is TPM ?
Talking Points Memo
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/
Thanks, Fern.
Mutual!
TY. I didn't know either.
TPM = Talking Points Memo
Thanks for the insight!
Perhaps the media could stop adopting the moniker of "Freedom Convoy," which only serves to underscore the message of the menacing, manipulative forces behind it. "Convoy of Rowdy Anti-everything Puppets" [CRAP]... Just spitballing here...
OK, that got a snort of coffee onto the keyboard. This "convoy" is CRAP!!!
Tittering myself upon re-reading ;)
😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣
“Newspeak and Doublethink” thanks to George Orwell, “1984.”
Love it! Thanks, Molly.
Absolutely!
I continually shake my head at the nerve of these angry men who act as though they are the center of the universe. Just as with the insurrectionists, they believe they are the victims therefore they are entitled to trash anything and everything like spoiled children throwing a temper tantrum! When my children were young and threw tantrums, they had times out! I’d like to see more of these immature, childish brats get the times out they’ve earned by their behavior! I have ceased being polite and not saying out loud how I feel because I might offend! Those thumb-sucking babies are putting the economies of two nations at risk because they are not getting their way. Grab them by the scruff of their necks and their belts and throw them in the time out room that has big thick bars! I’ve had it!
The permission to act meanly and brutishly was given during four years by our thuggish ex prez and those who love his ways are happily modeling themselves in his image. I’m 72 so I won’t see the full extent of this extreme bad behavior and the horrors of climate change but I truly worry for our young people. Civility is such a simple and elegant principle. Bullies are their own form of hell.
And ours
It’s so devastating to know we won’t see all the fallout from the extreme bad behavior of TFG and all associated with him and his crew- but our children, grandchildren and generations to come will be affected for longer than we would like to think.
The bullies rule the fools
"disruption and destabilization" are the goals of the insurrectionists. Tis pathetic and criminal at once.
War in Europe...could this be?
Who are we? Putin/Trump/Kim/FOX??
Is this devolution?
I feel ever so insulated from this madness, yet it is ever-present, this insanity.
The downside of the paradise in which I get to live is the presence of nuclear weapons in the Hood Canal and the Puget Sound and on Indian Island.
Growlers have been active all day around the Salish Sea. On high alert, one would suppose.
Could the madness be stopped?
Gratitude to you, Heather, for truth and context.
Sorry - but for the pig-ignorant, what are growlers?
The EA-18 Growler is an electronic warfare fighter airplane.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_EA-18G_Growler
Thanks
Growlers also are small fragments of icebergs about the size of a truck or grand piano (per NOAA), the image that came to my mind with Kim's comment. Seemed consistent with mention of the Salish Sea but I couldn't figure out how that would pertain to the truck blockades.
Jonathan The Growler seems an appropriate weapon to use against the Mother Truckers, though there might be some ‘collateral damage.’
Painfully loud, fossil-fuel consuming, carbon-spewing war machines
We stayed for a week in a hotel room equidistant from the San Diego airport and the North Island Naval Air Station. Civilian airliners couldn’t be heard above the background ventilation sounds. F-18s taking off from North Island were obnoxious.
The USAF used the PR slogan “the sound of freedom” in the 1960s.
Me too
You speak to me, Kim. I so want to "insulate myself from this madness" and do it perhaps too often to preserve mental and spiritual health. Then, try to carry on by doing my small part against the growing evil.
Oh Kim! You reminded me! Why is Trump STILL communicating with Kim? Hotels? I don’t think so.
Kim Today the sun is shining and we have 60 degree weather. A welcome respite from all that you mention.
These are the dark times that have been predicted biblically and otherwise. There’s no doubt the chaos will get worse.
Liz,
History repeates itself, so, many written entities seem to predict the future by simply representing the past.
Chaos, in the human race, is not new in any way and predicting future chaos is sort of like predicting the sun will rise.
"Disrupting a nation’s supply chains destabilizes its economy and thereby weakens the government in power. Indeed, U.S. lawmakers know this quite well: in 1972, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency funded a 26-day truckers’ strike in Chile that helped to destabilize the government of democratically elected Salvador Allende, who would be overthrown the following year by right-wing dictator General Augusto Pinochet."
It's critical to stop any copycat protests this side of the border! The Canadian truckers must be disassembled sooner rather than later, before the GOP mirror the movement here!
Such a great deal of information to digest! Thank you, Heather, for presenting it with your inimitable accuracy and insuppressible truth-values.
It essential that media amplifies that the vast majority of Canadians, Canadian truckers, Canadian workers, U.S. truckers, U.S. workers, and U.S. citizens oppose these protests. This is NOT a protest that has broad popular support. The constant coverage provides the wrong impression of the breadth of support. Let’s see more coverage of those opposing it.
Who are the Mother Truckers and what is their objective? As Heather and VermontGirl157 highlight, it is DISRUPTION and DESTABILIZATION. It is unbelievable that a bevy of truckers would spontaneously gather in Ottawa and spread to elsewhere in Canada and now the United States to block road ways and establish elaborate living quarters including saunas.
Independent truckers live a financially fraught life. Often they have heavy monthly payments on their mammoth vehicles and weeks of down time would be extremely costly. Heather mentions a conspiracist, James Bauder, who purportedly was an instigator of these “Freedom Convoys.” I believe that there are more sinister elements behind these organized and sustained activities that are currently disrupting a significant portion of the U. S./Canadian auto industry.
Heather mentions the 1972 26-day CIA-instigated trucker strike in Chile. As Political Officer at our Santiago embassy (1966-1969) I had insight into some CIA machinations. I believe that this strike, organized through the Alarcon brothers and financed by CIA (Nixon/KIssinger in Washington), was intended to cripple the Chilean economy and weaken the Allende government.
So who is behind the Mother Truckers, who appear to me to be a civilian equivalent of the Proud Boys and the Oath Takers? This expansive ‘vaccine protest’ does not magically spring from the head of Zeus. I urge the American and Canadian governments to follow the money and to unravel the trail of THE WHO AND THE HOW. (Does Fox News coverage provide a hint?)
I saw that in Vienna yesterday there was a convoy of cars in alliance with the Canadian truckers honking and flying flags and thinking they are protesting the vaccine mandates better than on foot. It made them easier to arrest and ticket. No car honking is allowed in the inner city. Also, the city had just removed a 5 month camp site from a youth environmental alliance that it had negotiated with about a new expressway that the Green Party members had approved, so I think they are primed to nip any insurrection in the bud. The news analysis of this was that people who were driving in the protest were needy of notice and had not been getting much marching on the ground and that had thinned the anti-vaccine protests out over time especially with the rainy weather. This was a new way to get notice, behind the safety of the vehicle. It still did not stop the police from halting them and people in Vienna did listen to their police. Of course their convoy only had about 100 vehicles. Still hearing halt and no in german might put a cramp on the truckers in Canada too. The neo-Nazis among them are assuming that all people with German accents in uniforms are on their side. It might be enlightening to find out that that is not the case.
Linda I saw that there was a 10,000 person protest in Canberra. Is this also a Mother Trucker protest of anti-Vacers? Illegal and should be decisively squashed. Arrest drivers, seize trucks, and then let the judicial process proceed at a snail’s pace. If they claim a ‘legal protest,’ I would respond with immediate legal actions.
I fear this disruption of American and Canadian supply chains is just the beginning of rhe anarchy about to be unleashed in the U.S. War may be closer to home than we imagine.
My thoughts exactly. Republicans have unleashed the hounds of hell
"in 1972, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency funded a 26-day truckers’ strike in Chile that
>>helped to destabilize the government of democratically elected Salvador Allende<<,
who would be overthrown the following year by RIGHT-WING dictator General Augusto Pinochet. "
Aye.
->WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND<-
Now? Russia and China are funding efforts to destablize American Democracy, and, it is working.
Spot on. And the RWNJ's are eating up the rhetoric like candy, with no concept of what they are really doing.
RWNJ's...always funny 🤭!
Fox's gloating over what's happening in Canada may be premature. The Canadian response to the so-called Freedom convoy is beginning to consolidate. The Conservatives who were giving passive support have backed away, and the stories of Canadians whose lives were disrupted, who lost their paychecks, who barricaded themselves in their homes out of fear are beginning to be heard. I have way too much information to fit in to this blog. You can read that Ontario has now declared a state of emergency which will empower the government to take decisive action. I have been overwhelmed by the eloquent expressions of moral outrage by my friends. I just want to share a song composed by a Canadian musician with my fellow readers of this blog- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOC-IUV_pzk
Oh Richard… that is everything. “Crybabies Caravan…you cry about freedom until you take mine”. Thank you, James Gordon.
thank you!
“Pawns in a rich man’s game”
Richard, thanks for the share and hope I you remain safe and sane…
Perfect!
Dr Richardson, thank you once again for a well written overview of the issues at hand. In yesterday's letter you pointed out the slanted message from the collective media (mainstream media in this message). Today, you once again pointed out the positive's from the current administrative's economic decisions and actions in your opening paragraph, yet no where in the media is this message delivered to the general public. I've been reading and watching with interest for the national coverage on the economy to point out all of these positives - yet they seem blind to them. I realize that 'negative news sells', but I do not understand why the message is being lost on the minions who don't actually read beyond the newsbits and soundbites. Could it be that's because all of our press is owned by Republican party members? Or could it be that reporters are unwilling to weigh in with some upbeat news? The 'sky is falling' inflation message is all these folks hear. No wonder Biden has such low poll ratings (who do they actually 'poll'?) How do we get the news anchors on National News to tell the whole story??
The MSM apparently prefers to follow the editorial slant of Fox these days.
Facebook is a privatized delivery vehicle for cyber weapons of mass distraction and disruption with the goal of destabilization. Karl von Clausewitz and Tsung Tsu would both be so proud. Psychological weapons are cheap, they don’t cost your side lives, they remain deny-able, and effective. The protesting truckers don’t see the pys-op, because they are the psy-op.
How long will we tolerate an American company giving blind access to our fellow citizen’s psyches with the goal of radicalizing them, and directing them to disrupt daily life on bridges and highways, Public Health and school board meetings, election counts, gun purchases, armed protests, etc, etc?
Facebook is a “Groundhog Day” Trojan horse!
I agree. Vehicles for the spread of lies, and the preying on emotions to incite unlawful and antisocial behaviors are our biggest challenge in this moment. Building minds to be resistant to this 💩 will take multiple generations. Our Earth does not have that much time.