Another Ottawa resident here. To correct the OP, it was actually incredibly organized here with former military and police running operations. Within the hours from when I drove through Friday afternoon to Saturday morning it was nearly impossible to break based on pure logistics like remote supply depots, etc.
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There’s a saying I like to describe people like this: “Seldom correct, but never in doubt”.
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My first thought was “hoping they overheat and break down in the Rockies with no cellphone service bars and the closest police call box had the cord ripped out”.
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What these truth and logic objectors will do once they get to DC is unclear — both to us and most likely to them as well.
Clog traffic. They will clog traffic and that is perfectly clear to me.
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On top of that, when the convoy started, the vaccination rate among truckers was already 90%. The mandates for border crossing long-haulers were part of a broader strategy to sweep up the stragglers keeping us all from reopening everything and maybe even ditching the masks. Canada has been in the high 80% vaccinated range for a long time now, but getting the last 10 or 15% needed to make everyone safe for normal life has been tough, and has required a web of provincial and federal incentives & mandates. For example BC saw vaccination rates jump 10 points when they started requiring vax card checks to go in bars and restaurants. Suddenly all the fence-sitters were motivated. That’s how it has to happen.
All that to say, even if this was about vaccination mandates (which it absolutely was not), it was just a tiny slice of man babies stamping their feet over nothing.
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I am going to predict this will not end well for the protesters.
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I hear that a handful of sand introduced into the dipstick tube works rather well to do that. (along with putting sand and other additives into various parts of the car…)
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That’s the Pennsylvania one, the other one is the California one.
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They chose NOW to do this convoy BS, to make their demands heard… now of course, we’re into this (foolish) relaxing of health mandates & rules… getting back to normal. NOW they demand the government do something that the government was already planning to do… but for the convoy morons, this is a win. End of masks , end of QR vaccine checking, end of rapid tests… the convoy will vocally boast it was THEIR efforts that forced the government’s hand.
“It’s 5pm and dark outside. We demand the government bring back the sun tomorrow morning” and of course the next day they’ll claim victory… if it wasn’t for them taking a stand, we would still all be in the dark. Thank us later.
Timing is everything.
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One can hope.
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I love this story about how Citroën sabotaged Nazi trucks in a super simple way that didn’t even involve sand:
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I’m wondering why the spellchecker did not catch the misspelling of Canada’s capital.
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Yes! My daughter, son-in-law, and 6 year-old granddaughter live in Kanata (an Ottawa bedroom community), and SiL couldn’t get to work at all (downtown Ottawa). It was tense for anyone living anywhere in proximity to these sorts of actions.
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“terminate in the vicinity of the DC area, but will NOT be going into DC proper.”
wink wink
Sounds like plausible deniability for when all the members of the convoy spontaneously decide, on their own and definitely not because of the organizers who can’t be held liable, to go to DC to cause trouble. This is being organized by far-right groups inspired by Jan 6 and the Canadian blockade. Of course they’re going to do that, I mean, what’s the point otherwise?
@Mindysan33
“People’s Convoy” - it loses something when translated from the German.
Yeah, these two “protests” are both driven by far-right American interests, period. They’re not different at all. (And not only was the Canadian blockade mostly not made up of truckers, they didn’t represent most truckers either - and in fact were openly hostile to other truckers, who in Canada are disproportionately not white and the protesters were a bunch of racists.)
It’s weird reading the details of the blockade, their stated goals (overthrowing the government), who was involved, and then seeing the American press completely fail to convey any of that. They just seemed unable to admit, “Yeah, it’s just a bunch of fascists.”
There’s a lot of right-wing money for these people. (The irony of conservatives claiming that left-wing protesters are paid is that it turns out some right-wing protesters actually are. It’s always projection…)
To be fair, the full context included Nazi flags, so I’m pretty sure we know which message they were trying to send…
That was the Canadian one, too… They got the right-wing truckers, but it was mostly not truckers. The two protests are very similar in terms of their (impossible) demands and right-wing nature.
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Cue C.W. McCall’s song Convoy, except played by kindergarteners with kazoos, triangles, and plastic recorders…
ETA: Played badly…very badly.
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I’m envisioning a blizzard and a desperate rescue attempt before it descends into a Donner party dinner party.
Or else half the convoy leaves when they get near Branson Missouri. . . .
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California, this is your chance! Do that secession you were thinking about and build a wall before they get back!
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