O Canada, O Tawa

[Stavros]

The protest in Ottawa continues, but seems to me to have morphed into a slew of nonsensical claims and demands. The initial complaint that Truckers be mandated to have a vaccine when driving to and from the US was not really the Federal Goverment taking away a trucker's freedom to choose -most had been vaccinated anyway, and it was the US Dept of Homeland Security that insisted Canadian truckers be vaccinated before entering the US- was the Federal Govt in Ottawa going to say no to this?

Among the weird, QAnon style drivel that is part of the 'narrative' we have this-

"Protesters have made constant allusions to a conspiracy theory which holds that the World Economic Forum (https://www.weforum.org/) is seeking to use the Covid pandemic to stage a “Great Reset”, which would purportedly create a “Marxian-inspired totalitarian system (https://www.amazon.ca/New-Order-Fear-Great-Trilogy/dp/B097SPK3Z4/ref=sr_1_1)”. Many proponents of this conspiracy theory blame the Forum for creating Covid-19 itself."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/10/canada-truckers-protest-mindset-intelligence-reports

So the Titans of Global Capitalism are in fact Marxists? Where do these stupid ideas come from? The most pressing question being, why do people believe this crap?

The messages from Canada are not helping -the provincial Government in Ontario has declared a state of emergency to deal with the Truckers threatening Toronto, while the Federal Gov is considreing a relaxation of border restrictions, as the Omicron wave subsides. Maybe the US and Canadian Govts can defuse this crisis on the border and relax the rules on mandates? Or have they boxed themselves into a policy bunker from which they can't get out?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/feb/11/covid-live-news-new-zealand-protesters-settle-in-for-weekend-china-promises-support-to-hong-kong-as-cases-spiral
(Canada issues at various points in the link)

Either way, the 'Freedom Convoy' cannot be take seriously as a campaigin for Freedom, when it is taking away other people's freedom -such as the freedom from fear, from noise pollution, and freedom from other people's ignorance that charactrises so much of this Trump inspired rubbish.

[filghy2]

Based on the Australian version, it appears these protestors are clueless about how the world actually works. For starters, they are protesting outside the Federal Parliament, even though most of the vaccine mandates have been imposed by state governments (apparently, it's outside of the Feds' constitutional powers). Notwithstanding this, some of them (as in Canada) want the Governor-General to dismiss the government, even though this is not how parliamentary democracy works. Apparently these people spend so much time on conspiratorial websites that they are unaware a Federal election is due within 3 months.

Ostensibly this is a protest against vaccine mandates, but it seems more like a motley assembly of cranks who want to vent various grievances against "the establishment", which have led them to spend way too much time in the murkier regions of the internet looking for reinforcement of those grievances. Maybe some of them are sensible, well-informed people who are just opposed to mandates on principle, but there don't seem to be many of those.

The irony is that this is occurring at a time when most restrictions have been removed, so the lives of the vast majority are now little affected. I doubt they are going to get much sympathy from the 94% of Australian adults who are fully vaccinated.