The French Show How To Handle A Freedumb Convoy

 

C'est si bon!

Paris police intercepted at least 500 vehicles attempting to enter the French capital Saturday, in defiance of a police order, to take part in protests against virus restrictions inspired by Canada’s horn-honking “Freedom Convoy.”

The police said on Twitter that several convoys were stopped from entering at key city arteries and over 200 motorists were handed tickets.

Elsewhere, at least two protesters were detained amid a seizure of knives, hammers and other objects in one central Parisian square.

Some 7,000 officers have been mobilized for the weekend protests. Police have created checkpoints, deployed armored personnel carriers and set up water cannons to brace the city for the protests. So far, the police blockade action has seemed effective.

Railing against the vaccination pass that France requires to enter restaurants and many other venues, protesters have tried to weave toward Paris from north, south, east and west, waving and honking at onlookers from their car windows. Some convoys sought to avoid police detection Friday by traveling local roads instead of the major highways leading into the capital.

Get out in front of this domestic threat or face what happened in Canada, where a tiny group of anti- government, anti- vaxxers have paralyzed Ottawa and disrupted the flow of goods between the U.S. and Canada.  It requires imagination, leadership and resolve.  Do we have it?

(Photo:  anti- vaxxer holds up "Liberty Convoy" sign in Paris/ Thibault Camus, AP)

Right-Wing Truckers May Disrupt Events Here

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a bulletin warning that right-wing trucker convoys may begin to disrupt major activities and events here in the U.S., including Sunday's Super Bowl in Los Angeles. The right-wing trucker disruption in Canada by a small minority over the past few weeks is threatening to spread to like-minded thugs in the U.S., urged on by reckless political fascists like Cancun Ted Cruz and the Malignant Loser. According to CNN's report:

"'The convoy will potentially begin in California as early as mid-February and arrive in Washington, DC, as late as mid-March, potentially impacting the Super Bowl LVI scheduled for 13 February and the State of the Union Address scheduled for 1 March,' the bulletin said.

'While there are currently no indications of planned violence, if hundreds of trucks converge in a major metropolitan city, the potential exists to severely disrupt transportation, federal government operations, commercial facilities, and emergency services through gridlock and potential counterprotests.'"

Don't think they won't try it here, like a January 6 on 16 wheels. DHS and law enforcement need to have countermeasures ready to confront them if that happens.

Internationally, the well-coordinated right-wing trucker demonstrations may be looking at more difficulties if they choose to try to shut Paris down, as their lawless counterparts in Canada are doing in Ottawa and elsewhere. From the Associated Press:

"Paris police on Thursday banned road blockades threatened by groups organizing online against COVID-19 restrictions, in part inspired by protesters in Canada.

Citing 'risks of trouble to public order,' the Paris police department banned protests aimed at 'blocking the capital' from Friday through Monday. Police will put measures in place to protect roads and detain violators.

Blocking traffic can lead to two years in prison, 4,500 euros (more than $5,000) in fines and a suspended driver’s license, the police department said in a statement."

The right-wing trucker community worldwide has been actively planning for disruptions using on- line forums, as they use anti-vaxx sentiment as a unifying but bogus cause, with the takedown of elected governments a prime objective. The French component has urged their followers to converge on Paris tomorrow evening, and to move on the European Union capital of Brussels next Monday. New Zealand is also facing disruption from their right-wing truckers. We all need to be ready for them, and to make sure their sabotage backfires.

(photo: Right-wing truckers blocking roads in Ottawa. AFP via Getty Images)

Trucker Thuggery: The Costs To America

Destructive convoys of right-wing truckers, ostensibly protesting vaccine mandates for cross-border trucking, are blocking main roads in Canada, and between the U.S. and Canada, in particular the Ambassador Bridge which connects Detroit with Windsor, Ontario. The thugs have resorted to tactics like letting the air out their tires to further delay their removal, and to disrupt traffic between the two trading partners, and according to a report in the Washington Post, it comes with a price to American businesses:

"Each day, $300 million worth of car and truck parts, agricultural products, steel and other raw materials flows across the bridge, according to Flavio Volpe, president of the Auto Parts Manufacturers Association in Toronto.

U.S. manufacturers rely on daily or near-daily shipments to and from their Canadian partners. Just one or two more days of interrupted deliveries could lead to temporary layoffs or plant closures, Volpe said.

'We work in 24-48 hour contingencies. Everybody is thinking about what that means for tomorrow’s production,' he said. 'A few dozen people are getting in the way of the American economy.'"  (our emphasis)

Already suffering from a shortage of foreign-made computer chips, the U.S. auto industry -- and their hundreds of suppliers -- can't afford another break in the supply chain, one that's caused by a relative few misinformed and radicalized wingers bent on bringing down the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Canada. More on the impacts from the WaPo:

"For almost 30 years, North American trade agreements have melded vehicle makers in the U.S. and Canada into a seamless operation. Incomplete vehicles routinely cross the northern border several times before assembly is completed.

As U.S. plants run short of Canadian components, they will react by cutting their own orders to suppliers elsewhere, meaning layoffs could ripple across the industry, Volpe added.

All major car makers – GM, Ford, Toyota and Honda – have plants in Ontario."  (our emphasis)

The worldwide anti-vaxx movement symbolized by the truckers' stunt appears to be a means to mobilize various conspiracists on the far-right, and the violent into hardcore militant actions. It's receiving encouragement from the usual fascistic operators in the U.S., including the Malignant Loser, Marjorie Traitor Greene, Cancun Ted Cruz and others of their ilk. Prime Minister Trudeau needs to clear the roads of these extremists, as we may have to do shortly in this country.

BONUS:  The thugs are, again, outliers --

François Laporte, the president of Teamsters Canada, which represents over 55,000 drivers, including 15,000 long-haul truckers, said the protests do not represent the industry in which 90% of drivers are vaccinated.

The Freedom Convoy “and the despicable display of hate led by the political Right and shamefully encouraged by elected conservative politicians does not reflect the values of Teamsters Canada, nor the vast majority of our members,” Laporte said in a statement.

(photo: Right-wing protesters in Ottawa last month, with Confederate and other racist flags displayed. Patrick Doyle/Reuters)

Trucker Thuggery

 

The trucker convoys that have paralyzed business and daily life in Canada and on the border with the U.S. continued today ostensibly over vaccine mandates for cross-border truck traffic. Beginning last month as a convoy to Ottawa to protest the mandates, the stunt has grown into an international right-wing cause célèbre that some want to use to bring down the Canadian government. From NPR:

"The so-called 'Freedom Convoy' began last month as a caravan of truck drivers who planned to drive to Ottawa to voice their opposition to a government mandate that required them to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to cross the U.S.-Canadian border.

That's despite the fact that the Canadian Trucking Alliance says the 'vast majority' of the country's trucking industry is vaccinated.

But the narrow focus of the protest quickly grew as more people joined the demonstration to voice their own grievances against Canada's government.

Some protesters say they're staying until all public health mandates are lifted, while others have called for the dissolution of the current government, as NPR's Emma Jacobs reported." 

In addition, signs for QAnon, right-wing militias and Confederate and Nazi flags have also appeared among the protesters, Jacobs said." (our emphasis)

Remember that the vaccines are intended to keep these thuggish covidiots from serious respiratory distress and death. But, you know, freedumb! There have been some arrests and confiscation of fuel that the truck thugs were stockpiling. Perhaps a dozen or more heavy tow trucks dragging them into an impoundment area until they pay fines for blocking traffic and commerce would be in order.  Or, turn the vaccinated truckers that are caught up in this mess loose on the thugs.

Watch for similar protests in the U.S., with the backing of the usual fascists, as a weapon of sedition to harass state and Federal officials, and to disrupt the economy that's starting to pick up real steam, since that would be bad for their right-wing cause. 

(photo: Trucks blocking the Ambassador Bridge between Canada and the U.S. ABC News)

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Michaelangelo Signorile writes about the "Biden boom, GOP bust", how the Republican- wired media continues to be caught wrong- footed, and how Democrats must campaign:

The economy is booming. There is no denying it. The media has had a chokehold on this story, pushing a narrative that was untrue and driven by the GOP. With the news today, the president and Democrats should smash through the media’s narrative once and for all — and condemn the coverage if need be.

Republicans are hellbent on attacking the economy and those attacks just can’t stand. They run from talking about anything regarding January 6th. Democrats have to throw it in their faces, and focus on the complete and total crack up of their party, which has allowed extremists to take control.

Hitting on those two issues — Biden boom and GOP bust — will help Democrats keep the House and Senate this November, hopefully expanding the Senate and getting past obstructionists. That will ensure continued progress for the American people. And it will push back the authoritarian assault on democracy. 

Ex-evangelical Chrissy Stroop has a thoughtful read on secularism in the U.S., it's diversity, and how the media (yes, they keep popping up) gets the causes of asymmetric social and political polarization wrong:

... Nonreligious Americans are generally a pro-social bunch, and overwhelmingly in favor of the very rights the anti-social, anti-democratic Christian Right is actively working to take away, like voting rights, reproductive rights, and LGBTQ rights. Yet, according to the legacy media’s punditocracy, America’s rapid secularization is something we should all be terrified of. 

Starting from the demonstrably false assumption that religion is essentially the only source of social cohesion, philanthropy, and pro-social behavior, prominent pundits and religion journalists (who should know much better) continually insinuate that secularization is somehow destroying the fabric of American civil society, and that the nonreligious are somehow to blame for American polarization. How, exactly, is unclear, and it could hardly be otherwise, given that both of these premises are entirely without factual basis.

Think pieces—and often even supposedly “straight” reporting—tend to ignore the empirically demonstrated fact that the social and political polarization that pervades these not-so-United States is asymmetric and significantly worse on the political Right. Not coincidentally, that side of the proverbial aisle consists largely of the conservative, mostly white Christians from whom the newly nonreligious are fleeing. These same conservative Christians, directly encouraged by their defeated president and a host of powerful Republican leaders, attempted to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by means that included a violent Christian nationalist insurrection in which people were injured and killed, very nearly destroying what was left of American democracy, such as it is. But, you know, there are problems with liberals and progressives too, so…

An example of how the radical "Christian" right is extending its disruptive political reach comes via the anti- vax truckers protest in Canada (where 90% of truckers are vaccinated):

After being denied several million dollars raised on GoFundMe, organizers of a trucker-led protest disrupting life in Canada’s capital have found a new platform: a Christian crowdfunding site where they raised more than $3.5 million in two days to demonstrate against the country’s vaccine mandate.

The new fundraiser hosted by GiveSendGo, which describes itself as the “#1 free Christian crowdfunding site,” reported Sunday that the “Freedom Convoy” campaign had raised several million dollars two days after GoFundMe announced that it was freezing more than $8 million in donations to the cause, a move that led Republican officials in the United States to announce investigations.

The rapid influxes of donations have prompted questions about the origin of the funds and sparked concerns among analysts about the use of the online platforms for financing fringe organizations that could allow the interference of foreign entities.

The convoy began as a protest to U.S. and Canadian rules requiring that cross-border truckers be fully vaccinated to enter either country, and it turned into a movement against many public health measures. The demonstrations have drawn praise from Republican leaders in the United States and left residents on edge — with police saying some have been subject to racist vitriol.

"Freedom convoy" my ass.  They're a bunch of loudmouthed, far- right, violent knuckle- draggers.

It's hard to exaggerate just how big a mistake Virginia voters made in electing Trumpist weasel Glenn Youngkin governor.  In office less than a month, he's tried to eliminate mask mandates in schools, vaccine mandates for Virginia colleges, wants to limit abortion access,  promoted laws banning teaching of certain subjects that (white) children might find "disturbing," and set up a snitch line for people to turn in teachers.  His "Team Youngkin" campaign staff prefers going after children rather than protecting them, however:

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s campaign lashed out at a high school student as well as Democrat Ralph Northam on Twitter this weekend, tweeting out the teen’s name and photo after the boy shared a news story about part of the Executive Mansion where enslaved workers once lived.

On Saturday afternoon, Ethan Lynne, 17, retweeted a report from the Richmond public radio station VPM suggesting that Youngkin (R) might be scrapping efforts pursued under two previous governors, Northam and Democrat Terry McAuliffe, to highlight the history of enslaved people at the mansion. The report contained an error, which Lynne noted on Twitter hours later, when VPM issued a correction.

But by then, “Team Youngkin” — the official Twitter account for Youngkin’s campaign — had attacked Lynne, posting a photo of the teen with Northam taken at a Democratic fundraiser in October.

“Here’s a picture of Ethan with a man that had a Blackface/KKK photo in his yearbook,” Team Youngkin tweeted a little before 5 p.m., pairing the October photo with a racist picture from Northam’s 1984 medical school yearbook that surfaced in 2019.

No matter how bad a campaign the Democrats ran, or the issues they ran on or ignored, you only had to scratch Youngkin's surface to see a typical hypocritical, ambitious, base- pandering Republican who was going to do everything he promised to do once in office. Only a state senate controlled by Democrats stands in his way.

The Washington Post editorial board addresses the seditious, off- the- rails censure resolution by the rotted- out Republican National Committee:

The Republican Party on Friday took an official stand — against truth and democracy. At the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in Salt Lake City, party leaders censured Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and moved to aid her primary opponent, Harriet Hageman, who is former president Donald Trump’s preferred candidate for Wyoming’s lone congressional seat.

The Orwellian censure resolution accuses Ms. Cheney and fellow GOP dissident Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) of engaging in behavior “destructive to the institution of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Republican Party and our republic.” Her transgression? Co-leading the House committee investigating the Capitol invasion, an act of political violence Mr. Trump inspired when he was a sitting president charged with protecting the nation from enemies foreign and domestic. The investigation, the censure resolution claimed, is “a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”  [snip]

Republicans have started their election year by revealing what they really stand for. Voters must remember this moment in November.

Will they?  See also Signorile, above.

As usual, Infidel 753 has assembled a kaleidoscopic link round-up covering all manner of topics.  We recommend a visit, and also check out his essays while you're in his neighborhood.

Regrets, They've Had A Few (Cont.)

 

... although likely not this low IQAnon missing link who went to her just reward thinking she had "bacterial pneumonia":

A leading QAnon promoter who urged both her followers and strangers she passed on the street not to take the COVID vaccine died Thursday of the coronavirus, making her just the latest vaccine opponent killed by the disease.

Cirsten Weldon had amassed tens of thousands of followers across right-wing social media networks by promoting the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy under the screenname “CirstenW.” She was prominent enough to become a sort of QAnon interpreter for comedian conspiracy theorist Roseanne Barr and started recording videos about QAnon with her.

Weldon focused on attacking vaccines and other efforts to fight COVID-19, saying in one video that Dr. Anthony Fauci “needs to be hung from a rope.” She claimed the vaccine killed people and even recorded herself yelling at people standing in line to receive vaccines.

“The vaccines kill, don’t get it!” Weldon warned the waiting vaccine recipients in an undated video posted to one of her online accounts. “This is how gullible these idiots are. They’re all getting vaccine!”  [Ed.:  "Yeah!  They're not smart =cough= like me! =hack=")

In late December, however, Weldon started showing symptoms of coronavirus infection. In her last video, posted on Dec. 28, Weldon struggled through her remarks about the coming overthrow of the United States government, coughing and complaining that she was exhausted.

Three days later, Weldon was hospitalized in Camarillo, California. She posted a picture of herself wearing an oxygen mask to Instagram and claimed she had “bacterial pneumonia.” Weldon wrote in a post on the social media network Telegram that she refused to take coronavirus treatment remdesivir, calling it “Dr Fauci’s Resmedervir (sic).” (our emphasis)

Talk about dying to own the libs.  Once again, Darwin rules.

Needless to say, fellow lowIQAnon conspiracists aren't taking this news well.  And, as one might expect, the deluded dolts are aiming their rage at precisely the wrong targets:

After Weldon’s death, her QAnon allies threatened to pursue violent action against staff at the hospital where she died. Scott McKay, a QAnon personality known as the “Patriot Streetfighter,” said he would publicize the names of doctors and nurses involved in treating Weldon, saying he wanted to “put the fear into these medical professionals” in a Telegram post. McKay proposed the hospital staff be sentenced to death, or be murdered in vigilante violence.

“If it’s not done in a military tribunal then it’s going to be done in the street eventually and not to my wishes,” McKay wrote. “That’s my greatest fear. But if it’s necessary, it’s going to be necessary.”  (our emphasis)

We're not lawyers or law enforcement, but that sounds like a terrorist threat.  Time to put that "Patriot Streetfighter" behind bars (but make sure he has plenty of horse de-wormer, though, in case he comes down with "bacterial pneumonia"). 

(Image: Weldon, via YouTube screenshot)

Anti-Vaxxers Attract Attention (And Bobby Pins!)

 

Stephen Colbert takes a look at some GQP- sponsored anti- vax testimony ("pulled from the ass"), with a Proclaimers- adjacent musical intro. 

 

BONUS: "Dr. Jill Threenickel" (Blaire Erskine) gives us more reasons to be vax- skeptical (via Crooks & Liars):