Think it possible, you may be mistaken by Francis turner

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Think it possible, you may be mistaken

by Francis turner

In 1650 Oliver Cromwell wrote a letter to the Scottish Parliament which includes the famous phrase

I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken.

The entire letter is fairly short, and if a bit cryptic to the modern reader – particularly the modern secular reader – seems remarkably relevant to the current covidiocy and in particular to the current standoff in Ottawa.

For example in the letter Cromwell complains that the Scottish parliament have completely ignored what Cromwell has said and instead have claimed he said other things. Also they have spread their incorrect claims about Cromwell to lots of people including into his army.

You take upon you to judge us in the things of our God, though you know us not,-though in the things we have said unto you, in that which is entitled the Army’s Declaration, we have spoken our hearts as in the sight of the Lord who hath tried us. And by your hard and subtle words you have begotten prejudice in those who do too much, in matters of conscience,-wherein every soul is to answer for itself to God,-depend upon you. So that some have already followed you, to the breathing-out of their souls: ‘and’ others continue still in the way wherein they are led by you,-we fear, to their own ruin.

And no marvel if you deal thus with us, when indeed you can find in your hearts to conceal from your own people the Papers we have sent you; who might thereby see and understand the bowels of our affections to them, especially to such among them as fear the Lord. Send as many of your Papers as you please amongst ours; they have a free passage. I fear them not. What is of God in them, would it might be embraced and received!-Oneof them lately sent, directed To the Under-officers and Soldiers in the English Army, hath begotten from them this enclosed Answer; which they desired me to send to you: not a crafty politic one, but a plain simple spiritual one;-what kind of one it is God knoweth, and God also will in due time make manifest.

This seems not entirely dissimilar to the actions of the “Despicable Ken Doll” a.k.a. the Canadian Prime Minister. PM Truck Frudeau has said he will not be inimidated, will not negotiate or concede and instead has claimed that the truckers are a REEE *ist *phobic etc. fringe movement while presenting absolutely no evidence that they are. This is transparently false and the only people who can’t see it are those who can check for polyps when they open their eyes.

Refering to the protests as a fringe is obviously laughable when opinion polls show that about the same proportion of Canadians agree with the protest as voted for the Turdeau’s party in the last general election. The REEE claims are also REEEEsible. If one goes to alternate media sites and youtube channels one sees that the protesters are a cross section of working Canadians of all races, both genders etc. and that the only thing they want, for now, is to stop the mandates and vaccine passports.

That’s not the only similarity. In the letter Cromwell then states fairly directly that if the Scottish Parliament doesn’t accede to his wishes and decides to fight, his army will defeat them.

[In that he was completely correct as a month or so later he killed or took prisoner about half the Scottish forces at the battle of Dunbar and in typical Cromewellian fashion showed no mercy to the prisoners who were marched with limited food or medical attention to Durham in Northern England and then the survivors of that march (about half the original prisoners) were eventually sold off to the New World as indentured labourers (a.k.a. slaves – and not a single one of the African persuasion). After that it took him a year to comprehensively defeat the Scots and a few foolish English Royalist allies, culminating in the Battle of Worcester, which Charles II survived by notoriously hiding in a large oak tree]

At this point the truckers are likely to show more mercy that Cromwell would, but then, unlike Cromwell they haven’t yet experienced several years of fighting as Cromwell had, let alone suffered a few months of hunger and disease (plus to be fair, they aren’t religious nutters like Cromwell either)

There is no doubt in my mind that at this point Justine and his deep state friends have the best offer they are going to get. Indeed it is notable that as the days go by demands are growing for more things like the resignation of Turdoh and the relaxation of a ton of other wuflu restrictions that were not present in the initial demands. Yet they don’t seem to grasp this and instead have doubled down on the insults. They’ve lied, they’ve prevaricated and claimed that they are the sole source of truth and ignored all the voices suggesting that they are wrong. As Cromwell puts it:

Your own guilt is too much for you to bear: bring not therefore upon yourselves the blood of innocent men,-deceived with pretences of King and Covenant; from whose eyes you hid a better knowledge! I am persuaded that divers of you, who lead the People, have laboured to build yourselves in these things; wherein you have censured others, and established yourselves “upon the Word of God.” Is it therefore infallibly agreeable to the Word of God, all that you say?

And then comes the famous line:

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.

All the Canadian leadership have to do is do what the Scottish parliament would not and implement what the protesters want them to do. If they do that they get to keep their jobs, their pensions and their lives. But doing so requires a certain humility and willingness to admit error. It’s ironic really that they are choosing to fight this battle because the scientific evidence suggests that the wuflu is no longer any kind of threat to global health. Hence other, more science-literate authorities are removing mandates and rules – Israel, the UK, Sweden, Denmark …

The Scots wouldn’t do that in 1650 and it looks like the Duplicitous Ken-doll and his buddies won’t either in 2022. Because to do so would mean a loss of face, and now that the protests have spread to other nations, if one political leader submits all the others face greater pressure to. So they resist. Like the Scottish parliament. And they will reap the consequences like the Scots did too.

Probably, also like the Scottish parliament, they will go on purges to remove from their ranks of minions anyone who suggests that maybe they ought to reconsider. In the Scots case that was a significant number of their experienced military leaders (and probably individual soldiers, though no one mentions them). In the current scenario it’s going to be the competent police chiefs and officers, who are the precisely the ones that will be needed to perform the removal of the protesting vehicles.

This is a problem for the authorities. As this screencap which has been circulating recently points out:

There have been a lot of similar points made on the non-corporate controlled parts of the web and even (amazingly) in the BBC’s coverage.

The stand-off has created a tough choice for local towing companies.

Their heavy tow trucks, commonly known as “wreckers”, can ostensibly help clear the roads, but trucker Doug Rowland says many may be reluctant to get involved for both political and practical reasons.

“A lot of towing companies consider themselves truck drivers as well,” he explained.

According to him, even large to mid-sized towing companies might own five wreckers at most, often at hefty price tags ranging from $300,000 (£221,000) to $1m, so smaller companies are likely to avoid a hostile situation that could damage their expensive equipment.

Further logistical difficulties arise from the sheer number of vehicles involved in these protests. They can weigh 20-30 tonnes depending on the load.

Each truck requires its own wrecker and hooking up a wrecker to a truck takes about an hour, assuming the driver is present and co-operating.

“If the trucker is not co-operative, it probably takes an extra 15 minutes or half hour because you don’t have access to the cab, the inside of the truck,” said Mr Rowland.

And that doesn’t get to the deliberate sabotage options. 20+ tons of metal on deflated tires with the valve stems cut and then (not before as a certain Harvard prof recommended) with the tires slashed is not going to move easily even once you have disconnected the air brakes. Especially if someone has also removed, say, critical bits of the engine or axles. It will take hours for experienced workers to move such a truck. It will take days for inexperienced ones to do so. And there’s far more than one truck at each protest.

Thus when newspapers like the NY Slimes and bluecheck experts on Twitter insist that the True D’oh and his minions quash the protests they demonstrate their lack of familiarity with large vehicles, physics, scheduling, logisitics and so on

The way this is going to be resolved is for Justin Castro to admit he was wrong and to stop madating vaccines, masks and other covidiocies. He can do it now while the Canadian (and Nothern US) economy is reasonably healthy or he can do it later when there has been a ton of economic disruption. Or someone else can do it after he ceases to be Prime Minister. The fact is that this is clearly not a few fringe nutters, it is a significant fraction of the population.

Moreover (unlike Antifa and BLM) these protesters are actually critical to the nation. If you put BLM and antifa in jail all you do is deprive a few cafes of the barristas and lecturers of their students neither of which affects anything critical. If you put 10% of your truck drivers in jail when you already have a critical shortage of truck drivers you are going to screw things up. You can’t win this war, all you can do is lose less horribly.

Fundamentally Justin, it all boils down to this:

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.

264 thoughts on “Think it possible, you may be mistaken by Francis turner”

  1. In the time between my writing this and Sarah posting it the truckers have allowed the US Canada bridge to reopen.and no permanent damage was caused. But I don’t see anything that was done by anyone in authority that will prevent another blockade as and when people get annoyed again.

    In fact the lack of damage stands in stark contrast with the Antifa rioters in Minneapolis over the weekend which did plenty of vandalism for little result.

      1. And I just counted- 13 open customs lanes into Canada, most with a vehicle in them or approaching. Two open customs lanes into the USA- empty most of the time, and I’ve yet to see a truck, only automobiles.

  2. As of this morning, all I’m seeing is that Ambassador Bridge has been cleared and is open. Rebel News has gone silent on the status, including on Twitter. There’s also nothing definite on Rumble.

    Make of that what you will.

    1. Looking at the MiDOT traffic cams that face the Ambassador Bridge, it looks like traffic is flowing across the bridge. Yesterday, there was NOTHING on the bridge at all, in either direction.

  3. When you have lived your entire life in a liberal progressive bubble it takes a very sharp dose of reality to bring one to their senses. Our elites here in the US, in Canada, and many other developed countries are experts at the game learned in Marxist institutions of higher “learning” where it’s all about who you know not what you know.
    And such a life cannot help but create leaders who are both incompetent and functionally insane by the definition that they will insist on repeating actions dictated by the socialist narrative no matter how many times such efforts fail to produce the wished for results.
    The rest of us with our own lives to lead have little choice but to sit and watch while Rome burns until the point is reached that the effects on our lives becomes intolerable and we decide that we must take arms against the sea of troubles created by our disfunctional leadership and by opposing end them.

  4. When you’ve lost the *BBC,* fer fudge’s sake, even for a leftist, it behooves one to reconsider one’s plan of attack. Who does Mme Trudeauşescu think he is? Biden?

    1. Apparently, and this Canadian author says what many of us fear.

      https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/02/13/the-canadian-dilemma-in-a-nutshell-n1558926

      My wife and I endorse that hope, doing what we can, writing and speaking on behalf of the truckers and, like many Canadians, digging into our savings to support their movement. But will that be enough? I confess that I am not sure. When the preponderance of a nation has willfully surrendered to demagogic authority and heedlessly behaves as instructed, is that nation really worth saving? Can it be saved?

      We might say that the truckers and their supporters are the vestiges of the old Canada, but they are an endangered species, a threatened minority. The mass of the country — the non-Canada in the traditional sense, Justin Trudeau’s Canada, Doug Ford’s Canada, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh’s Canada — is not behind them. Is a tragedy in the making? Does the fate of Canada hang in the balance? Must we prepare for the sequel, in whatever way is possible for us?

      I think of Hamlet: I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

      1. I am slammed under personal stuff, so I haven’t LOOKED, but I’ll point out, Steve, that there’s a reason I stopped writing for PJ. I didn’t like the editorial direction. Take that in account.

        2. Please ignore if it is prying or not for public consumption, but what issues did you have with it?

          I find I am reading it less and less as time goes on, mostly because the most interesting authors (like Steve Green) are paywalled and others (like Claudia Rossett) seem to post very little these days.

          1. Immediately after 2020 election we were told we could not dispute the election, etc. Now that was probably fear of being banned on Twitter and such, but such positions once taken harden on their own.
            I said “I can’t work like this” and walked.

                1. Just not worth $50 a year, to me. (That represents between 7 and 10 ebooks – up to 500K words that I know I’ll enjoy reading.)

                  I do have the ad blocker off for their sites; that will have to do to compensate for the “free” pieces.

          3. I find myself on RedState more often these days (Bonchie is frequently good). HotAir I only visit these days when I feel like being nasty to AllahPundit. BearingArms for Tom Knighton. Twitchy is sometimes amusing. TownHall I check, but click through far less than I used to.

            (Those are all of the ones under the “TownHall” banner that Salem bought out.)

      2. Canada’s immigration was specifically aimed at creating a more pliant population, and has succeeded to some extent, but Canada’s situation was long ago summarized as “rich by nature, poor by policy”, and they have always tolerated bad leaders…These protests are something completely new in Canadian history, which tells us how severe the situation really is…

  5. In my experience, narcissists are incapable of thinking they may have made a mistake. Not holding my breath on this one.

      1. Possible Babylon Bee upcoming article:

        Breaking News! Sources say US Constitution was written by Far Right extremists! Dangerous anti-state comments by the Founders of our nation have fueled Far Right extremists for far too long. When contacted via ouija board, many of our founding fathers expressed shock and indignation over such uncontroversial topics as the IRS, government spying on its own citizens, and destroying the economy for cheap political points.

        “Are you absolutely mad, madam? We wrote the Constitution to *curtail* the excesses of rampant governmental power!” Discussions broke down shortly after, as the Founder’s inexcusable assumption of gender caused our medium to faint. The dangerous, unwoke, and deluded ideas of certain Founding Fathers have held this country in its grip for far too long. Concepts such as personal responsibility, rule of law, and limited government have held back the creation of a progressive utopia for centuries.

        Fortunately, the wreckers and counter-revolutionaries of modern day America will starve in the dark with us, while China and Mexico invade and ensure a new dawn of peace, unity, and re-education camps/human sacrifice for the white mormon males that are left.

            1. “As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
              I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
              Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
              And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

              We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
              That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
              But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
              So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

              We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
              Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
              But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
              That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

              With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
              They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
              They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
              So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

              When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
              They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
              But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
              And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

              On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
              (Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
              Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
              And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

              In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
              By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
              But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
              And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

              Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
              And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
              That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
              And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

              As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
              There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
              That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
              And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

              And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
              When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
              As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
              The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!”

            1. G*d grant that we need not reach this extremity to recover it, but if needs must then let it be so.

  7. I’m glad people are waking up to what some of us have said all along. Via Insty:

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-canada-truckers-know-peaceful-protest-illibral-vaccine-mandate-ottawa-justin-trudeau-ambassador-bridge-freedom-convoy-11644784279

    The government claims its Covid-19 restrictions do not limit freedom, but that’s a phony argument. As Bruce Pardy, the executive director of Rights Probe, a Toronto-based think tank, explained in the Financial Post Nov. 3, “By maintaining the pretence that people have a real choice between being vaccinated or being stripped of their employment, schooling, social interactions and travels, governments seek to coerce and manipulate without triggering charter protections.”

    Mr. Pardy told me by telephone last week that he believes “the instincts of small-c conservatives are to protect institutions. But they don’t realize that those institutions are gone. They still have faith in a system of governance already compromised.”

    The truckers know better.

    2. Oh. Yeah, sure. WHAT have you said all along? That we should have burned it all down six years ago? What did you expect would emerge from the ashes, when that’s what the left wants?

      1. So which is worse? Ashes from waiting too long, or ashes from trying while there’s a chance of limiting the spread? And as you and I agree, these people are STUPID. They can wreck things just by the flailing tantrums they are throwing and the damage they are encouraging to infrastructure. There’s a reason backup power installations are up 13 fold in the last 13 years.

        https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2022/02/10/whats-good-for-generac-is-bad-for-america

        I think history is pretty clear, but hindsight is always 20/20. The title of this post isn’t just for the people who are in charge.

        1. It’s not the fact that they are being bought. Homes have a lot more reliance on electric today than even 30 years ago and generac have gotten to a level of price and quality that in the 80% of country that gets ice, snow, tornados, hurricanes, and other natural disasters yearly it’s just good practice.

          The problem is that they are being bought for stuff like California rolling blackouts for high wind, or the instability of the grid.

          1. So we can go hot after 6 more years of infrastructure deterioration, intel gathering on / purging of dissenters from various places, and consumption of seed corn. Not really seeing that as a major improvement on avoiding Venezuela, sorry.

            I hope I’m wrong, believe it or not, despite your ability to read my joyous thoughts of burning it all down. I’m just not seeing how.

            1. Steve? I’m hoping we don’t go hot in that sense at all.
              What in heck are you envisioning? Your vision never made much sense over the varied and wildly differing US.

              1. What I’m envisioning, in a highly interconnected and interdependent world and economy, where huge numbers of people are concentrated in such a way as to be utterly dependent on that web of supply chains staying mostly intact, is the non-solar equivalent of a Carrington event, where active destruction and passive neglect inflict more damage than can actually be repaired, with the attendant die off.

                Early 20th century technology may be wildly optimistic in that case, because we can lose too many people and too much infrastructure to rebuild it in any two or three lifetimes.

                  1. Since we’re talking about a century or so, why would you say more? It will take at least that long.

                    1. Why would we have to go through the pre-electrical wood-fired reciprocating steam engine part of the Industrial Revolution again? We know lots of stuff they didn’t know back then.

                    3. >> “Someone knows it, and hopefully how to apply it, and hopefully is still there to pass it on.”

                      There are still libraries with physical books around. As long as haven’t totally lost literacy the information will still be available.

                  2. Because they didn’t have to fill out environmental impact statements and comply with 40,000 regs and pay all the fees back then?

                    Just because the system collapses doesn’t mean the bureaucrats will want to give up any power. Seriously, you think Karen with the HOA will happily embrace tossing all her rules?

                    More likely, it’ll take two generations of die-off, not unlike why the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years until the last of the slave mentality had died out, before they could enter the holy land.

                    1. I’m guessing you’re mocking me, but….

                      All of the rebuilding is conditioned on a critical population mass with enough spare resources to take x number of people out of the production of food to devote to it. The Industrial Revolution couldn’t occur any earlier than it did.

                    2. Sorry, not intending to mock. I apologize that it came across that way! Dark humour at Imaginos1892’s proposition that it’d take less than a century, but not intentionally aimed as a weapon at anyone.

      2. I contend we can rebuild an early 20th century civilization from the rubble of the fall of this 21st. We could do the same if we let the rot continue and wait to build out of 23rd century rubble.

        I’m quite sure neither is what the left wants.

          1. Why? ’cause it’s better than cave living.

            It would be a bit hard (Actually impossible to create a 21st century infrastructure without an early 20th century one to build upon.) to build electric cars from the rubble. It would be a bit hard to build Leer jets, digital TVs, cell phones, mRNA “vaccines”…

            But from local rubble ; easily build steam boilers, generators, copper wire telephone systems, internal combustion, piston engines, incandescent electric lights…

            THAT’S WHY THE HELL I’d wanna do that, beats cave living and uncooked meat.

            1. When building anything else, you don’t go through all the same mistakes. You may make new ones, but you don’t redo the old ones!

  8. Most excellent read. Well done.
    Does anyone think that the forces of Castro-lite have thought through the consequences of the truckers doing ‘EXACTLY’ what is requested and going home….. and STAYING home?
    I am certain that in Canada, as in the US, the vagaries of a dislocated supply chain that is not keeping up with demand will put many people at serious risk. Who do they think delivers all their goodies? I am in middle Tennessee and EVERY trip to the store involves scratching part of the list due to complete outs on the shelf. If any sizable portion of the truckers simply stay home it will get very real very fast for large parts of the urban jungle. Let alone if in sympathy a large segment decides they have had enough of the nonsense

    We win they lose.

    1. Frankly my thought has been something similar for ALL the people who are being forced to take the jabs or no longer being allowed to earn a living.

      Imagine the chaos if all the teachers, nurses, Drs, truck drivers, retail workers, gov’t “workers” (OK, and yes, I fall into this one), service industry workers, etc just up and said “get the not-a-vax or get fired? OK, buh-bye, here’s my 5 minutes notice” and walked out?
      Frankly, I think the reason more businesses that have put in place such mandates HAVEN’T fired people in job lots yet, is because they (at some level) realize if they did that, there’d be nearly no one left to actually do the work to keep the business running. So they’re slow burning it, dragging out the process, continually waving carrots in front of the workers (like “OK, OK, fine, if you haven’t been / won’t show proof of vax, you have to get your brain scraped every morning before clocking in”) while keeping the stick of firing in plain view at all times.

      The workers are caught in a cleft stick between quitting (but then not being able to get unemployment to try to support them until they find a job) or being fired “for cause”, putting them in the same boat as quitting, or giving in and getting jabbed. Before anyone jumps in with their likely being able to sue about the “for cause” part of the firing, they’d still need an income to support themselves and their families while the case drags through the court system…

      1. They’re not very good at it, though. Wallyworld and Sam’s Club announced that “health screening” would end on Feb. 28, and that “fully vaxed” employees could stop wearing the masks two days ago.

        But then they said that anybody in the Fresh departments would have to stay masked. Which is silly, considering that there’s no danger in breathing on the fruit while moving produce, if there’s no danger in breathing on boxes while moving boxes. Or acting as cashiers.

        But OTOH, pretty much everybody not in public view is just doing what they feel like, unless there’s some gung ho managerclone around. Which is not much different from what people were doing before the official announcement.

        The main thing is that it produces resentment to have a difference between Fresh and other departments, or between mRNA and non-mRNA. And the resentment is not toward other employees, but toward the company. Not a very good idea, even in the short term, much less in the long term.

        1. Yeah. I love what I do, but lately it has been hard to even care. Nobody talks about it, but there’s a reason productivy fell last year, when it did not fall in 2020.

          And I ran my tail off for them in the first half too. Then they told everyone they were disposable as long as the contracts kept coming. Now I can’t help but wonder, what is the point?

        2. As many studies, and the behavior of celebrities at the err..Super Bowl..have established is that masks are useless…

      2. Imagine the chaos if all the teachers, nurses, Drs, truck drivers, retail workers, gov’t “workers” (OK, and yes, I fall into this one), service industry workers, etc just up and said “get the not-a-vax or get fired? OK, buh-bye, here’s my 5 minutes notice” and walked out?

        Why imagine the chaos from a highly dramatic but in most tactical situations foolish choice, when we can look at the ongoing chaos from the “make them fire you” option?

        There are going to be lawsuits going on for AGES, the idiots are now saying “sure, nurses can work when they’re known infected, because since we fired the nurses that have been working for the last two years there aren’t enough around,” all kinds of mess.

        The military zero-religious-exemptions-approved, and medical nonsense, is going to be *really* impressive.

        1. Is there any way to target the decisionmakers and politicos, I wonder? Or will it just be taxpayer funded…

          1. Magic 8-ball at this point, sadly.

            A lot of the carnage is going to be on the companies that decided to do the “safe” thing and go along with it.

        2. Hershey’s apparently fired their unvaxxed, then tried to get them to sign NDA. I gather the pressure of folks seeking a religious exemption was intense.

        3. I don’t disagree that there is chaos now, but I do think if all of the aforementioned people did walk, it would be the sort of chaos that no matter how hard they tried the MSM couldn’t cover it up.

          As for the lawsuits, saw something today that the DOJ is trying to limit the scope of the preliminary injunction against the mandate for Fed workers to people who were already signed up with the plaintiff (Feds for Medical Freedom) when the case was filed (which would put me on the outside.)

          My gut feeling from that is, they expect to lose and if they can limit the scope, it just means more people will have to get the jabs while a NEW case gets spun up. (IANAL so I could be WAY off on what it means, legally)

      1. Yeah, that was my thought, Don’t converge; just stay home. Completely, as in no deliveries anywhere. Gonna force ’em to drive with a gun to their heads??

        1. Exactly – keep it up for three days, a week at the outside, and Peppermint Psacki would be moaning about more than just the tragedy of the delayed treadmill.

        2. Emergency Act. They can DO that now.

          My magic crystal ball tells me they invoked the Emergency Act so that they can -force- all the rig-towing companies to go tow those protesters. At gun point. That’s what the Emergency Act lets them do.

          1. I should point out that the stupid festering weasels may be overlooking wear and tear on the tow trucks, and the issues of scale.

          3. They can’t force the towing companies to tow anyone. They can take the tow trucks away (in which case they have to learn to use them themselves), they can fine the towers, they can throw them in jail, maybe they can even shoot them. . .but they can’t force them to tow anyone when push comes to shove.

            1. People will starve. The rich will not.

              They don’t see a strike as a problem. They see it as the next step on nationalizing everything.

            3. I suggest …accidentally… towing government vehicles instead. They’re both parked on public property; easy mistake!

            1. IIRC, the PM goes to the governor General to get it invoked. The GG is basically a rubber stamp, so itnis really the PM’s call.

              All of this stuff says “governor-general”, but effectively it means PM

              1. Mostly important because they’ve been caught flatly lying about having exercised gov’t authority before now– may explain why he was so quick to say that they were not bringing in military.

            1. RCMP are allowed to carry guns? I thought they were more civilized than that. After all the citizenry are unarmed. Aren’t they? I know the tourists are. Even when driving in.

      2. I dunno. My pessimistic and cynical side says that Trudeau et al would welcome a shattering of the supply chain, especially if they can blame their enemies for it. Terror-famine, after all, is still one of the tools in the socialist toolbox.

        On the other hand, the idea of “Two weeks to curb the fatheads” does have certain appeal.

      3. Unfortunately, under his emergency powers, Trudeau can compel people to deliver fuel or face prison. facsim just makes everything so much easier.

      1. Do you really think we’ve actually won here in the US? I think we’ve made progress in shifting mindset and increasing awareness of how much shit the federal government and MSM have been shoveling. But I also don’t think we’ve shifted it enough to call it a win.

        1. Yes. We won a long time ago. In a few decades the historians will decide on an event to mark as the Single Turning Event When Everything Changed.

        3. yes. I do. We have already won. The mop up is going to be terrible, but we have already won.
          What you mistake for their winning is their lashing out at losing everything, in terror panic.
          They always scream loudest of victory when they’re losing.

          1. Whether we have won or not is open to question, but I can tell you that They have most certainly lost.

            Since 2006 Canadians have been treated to the spectacle of group after group blockading roads and train tracks, burning cars, trying to burn trains, beating people, and even mass-murder. [Danforth shooter, the Incel ram-a-van guy, #BLM, the G-20 riots, Nathan Phillips Square taken over by Antifa… the list is long.] All along, the government insisted that protesting was a sacred right, and we had to allow these cretins to flip cop cars and punch out old ladies if they felt like it.

            2020 rolled in with a Biblical plague. Canadians pulled together to fight it… except all those Antifa, #BLM and Indian riots kept right on being allowed to happen IN A PANDEMIC!!! And for two years we’ve been subjected to kids in masks that don’t work, mandates for a mad-science experiment that doesn’t even work at all, and lockdowns that do not reduce case loads while assholes riot, invade public spaces, crap on the sidewalk and the authorities let them.

            But now -rednecks- are objecting to a government policy that is literally putting them out of business in their thousands, and we gotta have The Emergency Act. My experience driving around the last three weeks is that a very large number approaching 50% of Canadians cheerfully support the rednecks. When a rig drives by with Freedom Convoy signs, everybody honks and waves. People are not honking and waving for the cops.

            Any moral authority they ever had is now gone. They have most certainly lost.

            1. I’m not sure how accurate this is, but when I was in Canada (I was dating a Canadian for a while.) The impression I got was that… Canada was NICE. It wasn’t necessarily good. There was a current that the nice was there to cover whatever the hell it wanted to. I was less surprised by this than I think many were. The government broke the Nice… They’re not going to like what’s under the nice. I didn’t get a close enough look in ’04-07 to tell fully what was under the nice where I was, but it was something I didn’t want to turn my back on. And I don’t know if it was the SAME thing across the country. I saw too little of it. There was also a sense of ‘you return the Nice or else’.

      2. One thing people often forget is that casualties tend to be highest in the period between which the war is won and when it finally ends. A good example of that is the 1941-45 Pacific War. The Allies had won the war with the Battle of Philippine Sea in July 1944. It did not end until August 1945 – and there were more casualties during that last year than in the previous years put together (excluding China, where things started in 1937 and included spats of genocide by the Japanese.)

  11. I invite you to consider the possibility that the situation in Canada is not Liberal-Conservative, not Rich-Poor, but is instead City-Country. The people who live in cities have a different view of the proper relationship of citizen to government, a much more subservient attitude than people who live in the country. Yes, there are individual exceptions, I’m talking about general willingness to accept government regulation and intrusion in personal business as a good thing. City dwellers are more tolerant of it than country dwellers.

    We see the same divide in the United States county-by-county electoral map: a sea of red surrounding blue dots. When the shooting starts, it won’t be Northern State against Southern State, it will be City Attitude against Country Attitude all across the nation. I don’t know where the truckers live, I only know they reflect the Country Attitude toward government whereas Trudeau and the major media exhibit the City Attitude. Canada is giving us a glimpse of how the conflict might look in the early, easy, non-violent stages, before things get ugly.

    1. And it is much easier to maintain a Country Attitude in the City, than a City Attitude in the Country. A lot of us they assume will support ‘Teh Authoriteez’ are quietly on the other side.

      Waiting…
      ———————————
      They’re the Experts! They only sound stupid to you because you’re not as Educated as they are.

    1. I know who are high up on my list of suspects, but I supposed they could have hired it done…. like 2016.

      https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/02/12/durham-clinton-campaign-sought-to-link-trump-to-russia-by-infiltrating-trump-tower-white-house-servers-n1558778

      “Lawyers for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign paid a technology company to “infiltrate” servers that belonged to Trump Tower and, later, the Trump White House “for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump,” according to a motion filed Friday by Special Counsel John Durham.”

      1. Here’s something I wrote elsewhere on this.

        The legal filing (and prior such) don’t give all the details so this is somewhat guess work.

        My understanding is that Tech Executive 1(aka Rodney Joffe)’s company NeuStar provided DNS services to the Trump organization. It also provided DNS services to the White House and to some other places of interest. By logging the queries to Neustar’s DNS servers from the Trump (and subsequently White House) computers without telling the Trump org and/or the White House they are on ethically iffy ground but if NeuStar’s terms of service allowed for “logging for security/research purposes” or something similar then it wasn’t illegal per se.

        But if they put something on the Trump organization computers / network that was not part of the authorized DNS service/server then that would be illegal. Also the White House logs would fall under the various national security regulations that would mean they would be required to be kept on a secure government server. If those logs were shipped off to Georgia Tech for analysis (which is how I read the legal docs) then it is quite likely that that was a breach of national security regulations – though depending on precisely how the records were handled and the contract that NeuStar/Georgia Tech had with the US Government it might not be.

        FWIW my day job does similar things and how we handle such data is carefully detailed in our ToS that users have to agree to before they enable our services. In our case we very clearly state that we do not log queries that do not match certain criteria (and which the customers themselves select). I suspect NeuStar may have specified broader authority in their ToS but I don’t know.

        1. My day job has similar policies. If they thought they would have “official cover” from say the FBI 7th floor, Neustar might have gone ahead.

          1. And by “official cover”, that probably doesn’t involve paperwork; just the kind of hiring decisions that put a couple of Chinese nationals in as ROOT ADMINS on the OPM clearance processing database during the Obama admin. Consequences? “Mistakes were made.”

            1. Like I said, hiring decisions.

              https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/clinton-campaign-lawyer-gave-sensitive-trump-data-to-cia-special-counsel-claims/

              “It is unclear whether Sussmann knew that Joffe obtained the data from his company’s federal contract. Joffe served as chief technology officer at Neustar until he retired last year. He had long worked with the FBI and other federal agencies on cybersecurity issues. He Received the prestigious FBI Director’s Award in 2013. “

    2. Andrew Torba thinks it’s the same assholes who tried to hack Gab.

      I don’t post on Gab (just lurk), but do *not* have an account at the Twit. Nor FaecesBook

    4. And here we go:

      https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2022/02/15/ezra-levant-cbc-is-digging-through-hacked-list-of-givesendgo-donors-to-freedomconvoy-in-order-to-intimidate-donors-on-justin-trudeaus-behalf/

      “BREAKING: Trudeau’s CBC state broadcaster is combing through the illegally hacked database of GiveSendGo donors, and emailing donors asking them to explain themselves.”

      Since he’s the owner of Rebel News, and is on the ground in Canada, I believe him.

        1. At which point, the coppers show up and arrest A for “funding domestic terrorism” which they don’t have to prove until much later. Again, words mean things, and that’s precisely why they are using them.

  13. Whatever the leftists propose, I’m pretty much against. Because (a) they’re corrupt swine, and (b) since commie Oswald shot JFK, they’ve become a rabid death cult.

  14. I find the article rather confusing. Is Cromwell the good guy or the bad guy? From my Dutch history (high school, quite a while ago) I remember him as a bad guy who treated the Dutch patriots rather badly, though I remember no details at all. In the end things still worked out right, though it took an 80 year war (with a multi-year armistice in the middle).

    1. There isn’t a world containing Cromwell (spit) as a good guy. In this case, though, compared to the Scots, he was an angel. The Scots were on the edge of a “terror”

    2. “Is Cromwell the good guy or the bad guy?”

      Yes? 😀

      By modern standards (even standards most here accept), there were no “good guys” during that time.

      Of course, even “bad guys” might correctly call a situation which is what this blog entry is about (IMO).

      1. Cromwell was a very bad guy, but he mostly wanted to have a united front among all Protestant powers.

        Of course, if you were a Protestant power (like the Dutch or the Royalists), and you didn’t want to unite with him, he would kill you just as surely as he killed everybody else.

        OTOH, if it weren’t for Cromwell, there wouldn’t be any O’Brien martyrs on the calendar of blesseds, and boy did he produce martyrs in Ireland.

        1. He hanged one of my ancestors from the gate at Killmallock. If you surrendered they would Let the men go but hang the officers. Not the Scots though, they killed the woman and children of O’Cahan’s men after they had surrendered on terms. They drowned them in the river. No rape though, for the Covenanter’s were godly men.

          1. Kirk, back in the day, mentioned that he had found a priest, and the priest believed that he had evidence of Cromwell directed attempt at mass murder of Irish, that went unrecorded by history.

            1. Actually, I think Cromwell killed more Irishmen than existed in the Ireland of his time. [Very Very Big Sarcastic Grin]

              IE While not a Nice Guy, his “crimes” have been inflated to a Massive Degree.

                2. He killed a king.
                  Who deserved it.
                  And did so honorably.
                  That offsets an awful lot.

                  (Eh, my ancestors were mostly Scots, but there are a few cavaliers and Orange Irish in the mix. The little family lore that survives, has him as a force of nature. Not evil per se, just very dangerous.)

        1. The following is what I’m sometimes tempted to say concerning Cromwell.

          “Cromwell Was A Monster!”

          “What! Are you some sort of Royalist???”. 😈

          1. Also curse you for making me defend Cromwell, you evil little maniacs.
            OTOH without him, there’s a good chance husband wouldn’t exist since his first ancestors in the US were exiles from the “Glorious revolution.” On yet the other hand, well, Dan’s family seems to have a way of getting into trouble, sometimes on the right side sometimes not. BUT always trouble. (Fought in both revolutionary and civil wars, and were spoiling for a fight well before those started.)
            Fortunately — coughed — he married a woman with peaceable temperament who hates politics, so that tendency should be cleared out in future generations.
            COFFFFF

            1. Have you ever walked the lonesome hills
              And heard the curlews cry
              Or seen the raven black as night
              Upon a windswept sky
              To walk the purple heather
              And hear the westwind cry
              To know that’s where the rapparee must die

              Since Cromwell pushed us westward
              To live our lowly lives
              There’s some of us have deemed to fight
              From Tipperary mountains high
              Noble men with wills of iron
              Who are not afraid to die
              Who’ll fight with gaelic honour held on high

              A curse upon you Oliver Cromwell
              You who raped our Motherland
              I hope you’re rotting down in hell
              For the horrors that you sent
              To our misfortunate forefathers
              Whom you robbed of their birthright
              “To hell or Connaught” may you burn in hell tonight

              Of one such man I’d like to speak
              A rapparee by name and deed
              His family dispossessed and slaughtered
              They put a price upon his head
              His name is known in song and story
              His deeds are legends still
              And murdered for blood money
              Was young Ned of the hill

              You have robbed our homes and fortunes
              Even drove us from our land
              You tried to break our spirit
              But you’ll never understand
              The love of dear old Ireland
              That will forge an iron will
              As long as there are gallant men
              Like young Ned of the hill

                1. I’m fairly sure I’m not descended from Edmund Ryan, the titular Ned of the Hill or Éamonn a’ Chnuíc though I have any number of Ryan’s in the old family stick, on my fathers side, not my mother’s there being very few last names on that side. The original song is very beautiful, I highly recommend it.

                  I am descended from one Michael Hogan, or a galloping Hogan, another rapparree. He left with the Wild Geese, went to France, killed a man in a duel, then went to Portugal and led a Portuguese army against Bourbon Spain at the siege of Campo Maior in 1712. There are still Hogans in Portugal, but my line came back to Ireland via Savoy-Sardinia and France.

                  The glory of America is that it’s a young country and all that hatred was left behind, they seem to be trying to bring it back, but they’re evil f-cks. The simple fact is that the veterans of the civil war weren’t looking back at the Boyne or Culloden, atrocities burn.

                  1. On one side I’ve got a minor noble what saved a king by basically hiding him in her petticoats the oncet, and got free of taxes for her whole family line. On the other, Scots and Irish cattle thieves, drunks, and occasionally fiesty farmers, what fled Germany sometime around when the Romans were still stirring the pot if the stories are at least somewhat correct. Like as not we had family on both sides of the nasty business around the time of Cromwell.

                    I’ll not be getting into that. I can recognize a swamp when I see it.

    4. Irish Americans tend not to like him.

      Effective way to tick them off is to call him Saint Oliver, and describe him as having brought Christ’s word to the Irish.

      He was of a religious faction that eventually left England, because the Church of England was not extreme enough, in the direction they wanted to go, for the faction’s taste. Modern Church of England types in England are thus sometimes angry at the religious faction for saying that those that stayed were not good enough.

      Then the religious faction in New England basically self-destructed. Their descendants are often strongly atheist.

      So, he does not have any groups that would naturally advocate for him.

      Between the strong dislike, and the lack of serious advocates, he is precisely the sort that a contrarian jerk would say is a good person.

      Issue is, the people who one would piss off with the available arguments.

      He may have actually made an effort to kill off the Irish. Saying that this is a good thing not only seriously irritates Irish-American Catholics, but potentially alienates everyone with a sound Christian understanding of the value of human life. So maybe American lapsed Catholics, or Reformed Jews, or Prosperity Gospel protestants would not mind so much.

      The most viable argument would be in cutting off the head of Charles. And the Protestant/Catholic politics around that make it hard to be really vehement about that without going deep enough into Anti-Catholicism that you potentially lose trust by your Catholic audience.

      He was hardened by civil war, he was a religious fanatic, and he did hard things easily when he calculated theoretically that they were licit. That is at least, all things considered, a bit of a dangerous approach.

      The best argument I have in that direction is a rather tedious argument that the Catholic church, in endorsing rulers and in personally moving funds across ethnic and cultural borders, was acting as a secular empire, and was not properly seeking divine guidance in such actions due to failure to realize that they were also a secular empire, and because of that, having a normal level of fail-ability in that aspect, not the level of failabilty claimed in mattes of religious teaching.

      Because of that, pushing for Charles I and some other English rulers contributed to a profound breakdown in trust between and hence the viability of peace between English Catholics and English Protestants. I’ve mainly been thinking about that, because of the apparent break down in trust between American Christians, and American Communists. There being lack of peace between American Christians and Communists has a great deal more justification, because Communism is an evil religion, and is inherently lacking in the capacity for peace. Communists are only peaceful when they are a minority in a population that follows a religion capable of peace.

      What happened to the Irish appears to have sucked, but they were Catholics inside the sphere of influence of a polity where a breakdown of trust had been experienced between Catholics and Protestants, or where there had never really been true peaceful trust, and Charles had greatly excited matters. But now telling the Irish ‘sucks to be them’, and attributing it all to failures solely on the part of the Catholic church strikes me as too dishonest, even in service of a dick move.

      I like dick moves, and I like being in a position that I can speak an argument and be utterly willing to defend it. “Cromwell was unconditionally good” is at least a step too far for me.

      And that is as someone who can go “akshully, Qin Shi Huangdi was the good guy”, and likes Ghengis Khan. Maybe also Ogedai, and maybe maybe Tamerlane.

      My issue with defending Cromwell is basically that his enemies include some innocents of reasonably sound religious convictions. Like how I can’t unconditionally praise Simon d’Montfort, because I’m uncomfortable with the alleged actions against Jews. It may be that if I had studied d’Montfort more, I might be able to find an argument to justify the behavior as licit, or I might find that I would never have such an argument.

      1. I wonder if he wasn’t a kind of polarizing figure; a 17th century Donald Trump. Brash, confident, certain in his judgements, extraordinarily able, charismatic to a degree … and terribly controversial, then and now
        The best fictional characterization that I have of him is on one of my very favorite historical novels. Rosemary Sutcliffe’s The Rider of White Horse. – which is the story of the wife of Sir Thomas Fairfax. It’s a gorgeously-written novel about the first years of the English Civil Wars. She and her small daughter follow her husband on his campaigns for the Parliament cause in the north of England. It’s a beautifully written novel … I only wish that I could write as well.
        If you can find a cheap copy, check it out.

          1. Primarily because in 1632 he hasn’t ravaged either Scotland or Ireland yet. The Event which landed the future town in 1632 cut that off.

            1. Richelieu had his competencies, and he treated his immediate collaborators well. He just stunk as a bishop, a Christian, a government employee, and a human being. But in a really impressive way.

              That book Dumas put out at the end of his life, where Richelieu is his protagonist, is actually kind of interesting, because it shows his strengths.

        2. I wonder if he would make a good framework for a Vader type character? Someone who had extreme potential, significant justification, but may have ended up going to far in the end?

          Probably should go dig up some food books on Cromwell from several different sides, and the War of the Roses as well.

      2. I’d argue that Simon D’Montfort’s actions against the Jews pale in comparison to his advancement of representative government, and edits to rein in the power of the monarchy during the Baron’s War.
        But YMMV.

    7. He was a complete and utter bastard and a religious true believer.

      But in certain ways he was partly right and therefore possibly good. But mostly he was the bad guy

      1. Steve Allen had a couple of episodes of Meeting of Minds that featured Cromwell, and they were a pretty fun overview of his good and bad sides. He wasn’t all bad, and he had a certain level of honor and justice. But man, he did bad stuff all over. There’s also a historical movie about him from the 1970’s with a lot of focus on how he became Lord Protector.

  15. They say that when one realizes one is dealing with a malignant narcissist you don’t confront them, you just get away since they often get violent when they realize you’re on to them.

    To that end, Trucescu has just deflated what amounts to martial law in Canada.

    Two things First, the truckers should now go home and stay there for a while. Let Toronto starve. Second, there are an awful lot of junior officers wondering who their men will shoot at if an order to fire is given.

    Trudeau leads a minority government. That may become important in the unlikely event the Canadian political establishment wakes up.

    1. “Trucescu has just deflated”

      I don’t know, to me, Trudeau’s head seems just as inflated as always.

  18. Hypothesis: The 33-50% casualyies of the Black Death in England in 1348 caused a labor shortage enabling laborers to demand wages and freed up rich farmland that then freed up the poor farmland for raising sheep and cattle that caused a massive economic surge in wool and better food for everyone.

    2. That hypothesis is well into the theory range.
      It also gave rise to peasant revolts (Which unfortunately led to a lot of peasant heads on pikes. The good guys don’t always win.)

  20. And on that note: I was wrong about my vaccine stance.

    Based on what we’ve seen over the last two years, with our medical profession actually advocating for denying treatment on the basis of skin color sex, and redefining words like immunity and vaccine to being outright lies, I shouldn’t have thought there was any justification for requiring that effective treatment be applied to anyone.

  21. That’s one crossing in Canada cleared. What about the others?

    Also, I’ve heard nothing about the convoy that was supposed to start in Los Angeles yesterday, so I’m guessing nothing happened there.

      1. Neither; the latest I’ve seen is that they pushed it back to March 1st, because it was taking more time to organize. How much the Super Bowl and the “500 surged DHS” played into this is anyone’s guess.

  22. a) I just got moderated for about the strongest defense of Cromwell that I can honestly make. I think for a mild curse word describing my exploration of arguments in that direction. 😀
    b) I sent a guest post Saturday. Francis Turner’s post is better than mine, so I understand posting it first. I understand Saturday being a super tired day for you. I’m a little worried that what I sent may become no longer timely. But, I have no idea what is going on in Canada today.

    Or in the US outside of where I have been today.

      1. thanks

        I’m partly simply nervous in general, for personal reasons.

        Letting that bleed over into concern of what the hockeysticks these lunatics might do next.

  23. Trudeau doesn’t want to be the first one to capitulate and he’s afraid of what happens when he no longer has the protections of PM. He’s projecting hard regarding reactions to him losing this fight, and that’s paralyzing him.

  25. I know just enough about Cromwell to know we wouldn’t get along well– but good heavens, did he ever have ONE EPIC LINE!

    A phrase that should be turned into a motto–though what language to put it in, is a challenge all itsown.

    1. Many more than one, actually.

      Whether you like the guy or not, he had a forceful personality and a way with words.

  26. Heh. Everything old is new again. For a slightly more accessible and inevitable speech…

  27. Trudeau just invoked the Emergency Act, formerly known as the War Measures Act. This is essentially the same thing as what Americans understand to be martial law. That is happening right now, as of 4:30pm today, Monday 14th of February. Happy freakin’ Valentine’s Day.

    I’m not going to say much about it because Lucy is watching. That tells you everything you need to know.

    1. Those of us living here are feeling pretty sick right now.

      He said it was only temporary.

      Then again, he also said that he would never mandate vaccinations, or implement a vaccine passport.

      He’s invoking provisions related to tracking and freezing the funding for terrorist groups, and applying it not only to financial institutions but also crowd funding sites.

      Welcome to Canada 2020(2.0).

        1. Yes I do. And holy crap, do I have an ache in my frigging neck right now. I’m cringing so hard I think I might dislocate my spleen. What the actual fuck?!

        2. And me. Powerless, stuck in the machine (I work for one of the provincial health authorities), and feeling like I am spitting into the wind at times, but here.

      2. Time to see how the truckers respond. Everyone in Canada might want to do some contingency planning just in case half of Canada’s truckers decide to take a sick month.

        1. Can I say *thank you* to Sarah for raising the food issue last year? We have about a month or so of (canned, but usable) food put aside thanks to her.

          1. We’ve been stocking up since we moved here mumble years ago (very rural southern Oregon–80 mile round trip for groceries), but the Mormon concept of a year’s supplies is looking better and better.

            Some of the people in $TINY_TOWN are LDS, but they are decidedly hard targets. I laugh when I hear of someone thinking they can rob those stashes…

            1. Yeah, this. One fella at the maker space I used to be part of once said something along the lines of, ‘ I don’t worry about preparing. If TSHTF, I’ll just go take what I need from my Mormon neighbors.’ When I congratulated him on discovering a novel way of committing suicide, he seemed a little confused.

          2. While not there, have been Taking Steps. Buying more when sales & pay converge, making sure I have alternate means of room heating, and of cooking, and of lighting (I suddenly have how many kerosene lanterns? One is more for heat than light). If I had to hole up for a month, I think I could do it. I wouldn’t be comfortable, but I’d be alive to bitch about it.

            1. >> “but I’d be alive to bitch about it”

              Perhaps memory is just failing me, but I’ve been here for years and that feels like the worst uncensored profanity I’ve ever heard from you. Unless you count certain possible translations of “moo,” anyway.

              I’m proud of you, old man. 😉

          4. Insty has been linking thirty-day emergency meal kits on Amazon for the last several days. They’re typically “two meals a day” affairs for one person, with the specific meals determined by the kit you’re buying. Worth a look for anyone who wants to get a simple emergency food supply in place in case things go bad.

    2. And I only *wish* I could say this was any kind of a surprise… at some point down this road, Trust-in-me Fou-deau is likely going to find it’s pretty much impracticable for him to turn around and come back to… anywhere defensible. Though I’ve not heard much else directly, (excerpts of) Trudeau’s question-and-answer responses in Parliament were pretty near identical to ‘spout worn-out platitudes and vow to stay the course’ (but, course to where?) — which is short-term straightforward and (quite possibly) medium-term, ah, unsustainable.

      The question of fact I have (and currently simply too lazy to research) is, does Trudeau gain any immunity or protection against a Vote of No Confidence, by invoking the (“never before used”) War Measures Act? In a parliamentary system, you don’t have to precipitate a successful impeachment to lose office…

      And meanwhile, “Back in the USA”… not only has Give Send Go been hacked (by widely assorted reports), their entire Web site is now (or recently was) functionally offline; individual ‘accounts’ give you a 404 Not Found code, and the base address (givesendgo dot com) returns you a simple 1-page message:

      “We are currently offline for maintenance and server upgrades. We are continuing to improve our platform to ensure it will be the best fundraising platform on the internet. Thank you for your patience and support. Please check back later.”

      OK. Nothing if not consistent…

      1. The can still No Confidence him. That said, a majority of Parliament would have to have balls. I do not hold out hope for this.

      2. It’s not “never before used”.

        His father used it during the October Crisis. Of course, FLQ terrorists had been doing bombings and kidnappings for a hile at that point, so he had massive popular support.

        1. Historical point: the version Trudeau the Elder used was repealed after he used it, and then rewritten into the current law in 1988. The current law has never been invoked.

        2. His father used it

          Thus the quotes, around a widely-repeated piece of not-information I didn’t want to hghlight further.

          But as you say, it doesn’t really get much better in the actual history. I actually don’t know much about the FLQ, except they were a fringe-of-a-fringe part of the bigger Quebec Separatist movement, and that a lot of people were very ready for Someone to Do Something to Fix Things there by the time Trudeau (senior) did what he did.

          But… truckers with loud horns, and bouncy castles for the kids? Contrast can be very cruel, sometimes.

          1. ‘Bombs are political free speech, but Bouncy Castles are terrorism!’

            Eight months of vandalism, looting, arson, assault and murder are ‘mostly peaceful protests’ but ‘parading’ on public property is INSURRECTION!!
            ———————————
            The Capitol is OUR house. Congresscritters are just the help.

    3. F-sake. He has no idea how bad this could get. What happens if the military creatively ignores an order from what, like it or not, is Her Majesty’s government? That breaks the principle of civilian control. Worse, what if they obey him?

      There are no good solutions here outside a *very* quick vote of no confidence to topple his government. Like today.

      1. Thanks mostly to Trudeau the Elder, with more recent help from Shiny Pony the Younger, the Canadian Forces doesn’t have enough guys to secure Toronto from a group of mischievous Girl Scouts. 60,000 if they include all the career seat polishers, Majors and the fat guys in QM. All our armor is in Europe.

        I’m suddenly happy about that for probably the first time in my life.

        1. Which is why he’s going to confiscating bank accounts rather than calling out the Forces.

          “He is just authorizing banks to unilaterally freeze your accounts on the basis of suspicion alone, no court order required, with legal immunity. I hope everyone realizes how much more dangerous this is than the military”

          Bear in mind that under the Patriot Act, our DOJ already has that authority when it comes to anyone they want to declare “domestic terrorists”. That’s why they use the term. It isn’t just a nasty name.

        2. What I haven’t been able to figure out is whether or not he can deputize SturmAntifa as “Police” under it. And what happens if he’s stupid enough to try that openly.

              1. When one attempts to become in truth all aspects attributable to a cartoon villain, one should not be surprised when some plucky young heroes drop an anvil on your head. Seriously though, I thought he was trying to pull a Biden, but instead he’s trying to become, what, Cruella DeVille?

                When the people you’re calling terrorists are the average working people of Canada, who also have massive popular support (outside Canada’s own moonbat urban lefties, apparently)… Well, for one thing you’re diluting the word “terrorist” in the English language by using it for the working families that disagree with your totalitarian policies.

                We’ve seen what happens when a (mostly) free people cozy up to evil before. It doesn’t end well. And someone else gets stuck with the job cleaning up the mess. Only there’s no one left to do it right now. The solution is to stop taking cartoon villains seriously. Because I don’t want anyone coming around for the few perfectly good anvils to drop them on some dumb politicians head. Think of the poor smiths, people!

                1. ” The solution is to stop taking cartoon villains seriously.”

                  Sigh. It’s way easier to do that when cartoon villains don’t have the capacity to send armed minions to arrest you (January 6 protesters, Canadian truckers, some of each) on invented crimes, or seize your bank accounts / any cash you’re carrying without charges let alone convictions (Canada Emergency order / civil asset forfeiture here), or sabotage your equipment (Canada again), etc.

                  As long as they stay in their volcano lairs and eat each other, that would be fine. Unfortunately, they seem to be genetically encoded to “make you care”, and also for Gotterdammerung when thwarted.

              2. I saw a report that had the deputy PM (one Chrystia Freeland–that’s a hell of a lie right in her surname) at a press conference: If the government *suspects* you have donated $25.00 or more to the trucker convoy, your bank accounts can be frozen. Even the Canadian Civil Liberties Union is freaking out over the various “emergency” rules.

                In another bit, the bank-originated freezes (for badthink on social media) will be done without liability to the banks.

                Cue the mother of all bank runs.

                1. And won’t that be wonderful in an inflationary spike, when the only place for the money that can’t be electronically tracked and seized is under your mattress? Yes, I know, crypto, but “does crypto lose it’s access on the network overnight?”

                  We’ve placed an all-in bet that they’ll eat themselves before the system crashes, and the dice are still tumbling. All that’s left is praying we don’t crap out. Which I do. Daily.

                2. Under the Emergency Act, yes.

                  … which is why I am still looking for the proclamation. Kind of like Biden’s vaccine mandates that he announced, when there wasn’t even the gov’t action to START trying to do it.

                  If you can get people to do the over-reach *for you*? Much easier to get away with things.

                  Instead, I can’t even find the order that was mentioned in the speech.
                  https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2022/02/remarks-by-the-deputy-prime-minister-and-minister-of-finance-regarding-the-emergencies-act.html

          2. Antifa is dumb and brazen enough that I suspect shooting would start if he were foolish enough to do that. The lefty shocktroopers of various flavors would almost certainly provoke an awful lot of people pretty much immediately.

            1. The problem with your comment, junior, can be stated in one sentence: After 50 years of bluff with “don’t step on snek”, “freedom seed dispensers”, etc., none of them believe that will happen, because it never has.

              They don’t read history, or if they do, they look at the times when “armed struggle” has put them in power. So that bluff is being called. And because the call is taking the form of actions performed under “color of law”, too many Good Guys are standing aside or actively joining. We’re going to have to cover our bet.

              1. I wouldn’t say that’s a problem with my statement. I’d say that rather it advances my point. Put these ideology-backed thugs in any sort of position of power, and they will abuse it badly enough to draw a violent response from communities that they are “policing”.

                I’ll also note that they’re ignoring the fine example provided by one Mr. Rittenhouse during his visit to Kenosha. But that’s to be expected.

                I suppose the question is whether those in authority want that sort of armed backlash.

                2. Well, they wouldn’t…. if they believed it would actually happen.

                  That was my point. They don’t believe it.

        3. Your tanks are where!?

          Canada doesn’t have that many tanks to begin with (only a regiment’s worth of Leopard 2s). What is it all doing overseas?

        1. This is a good point. Once Shiny Pony invoked Emergency Powers, I think they probably all just edge away from him, and maybe push him into the pit he dug for himself.

          1. Remember how Theresa May’s Brexit plan crashed and burned, and she still handily survived a vote of no confidence. Who wants to take his place?

    4. What do you expect from a wussy little bed-wetter that can’t handle somebody somebody saying “You’re wrong”? ‘Stay the course’? Yeah, right over the edge of the cliff.

      They know the cliff is there, they know they’re headed right for it, and their fixed beliefs won’t let them stop or turn.
      ———————————
      Ma Lemming: “If all your friends jumped off a cliff into the sea would you…oh…um…nevermind.”

  29. This will get very ugly, very fast. It’s said that no modern city is more than three to five days from starvation. I suspect that Ottawa will be the test case for this.

    1. It is my hope that the truckers will not hold the population to ransom, because that would be a mistake. If all they do is what they have been doing, namely parking their rigs inconveniently and playing road hockey, they’ll drive the government crazy.

      1. I suspect that ship sailed (and is rapidly sinking) already. Depending on how much BS was put into the poll, *supposedly* 56% of The Canadian Public disagree with the truckers. Not a number likely to give truckers any incentive to be nice to the people of Ottawa, regardless of the fictional content of the poll.

        1. A couple of relevant posts seen on Gab. 1) Talk about a US/Canada trucker’s strike. [link goes to a repost of the original tweet] https://gab.com/Guild/posts/107800031346873401
          2) Some (many?) businesses (in this case, those with dump trucks) vowing to boycott government owned|funded, nor NGOs supported by the government. Specifically, no bids nor acceptance of contracts.

  30. BTW, Cromwell was more into power than religion…When some of the real nutters, Puritans and their allies, started to cause trouble, Cromwell sicced General Monck and the Army on them, and that ended rapidly..

  31. “…so smaller companies are likely to avoid a hostile situation that could damage their expensive equipment…”

    This is something I’d noticed before the War Measures Act (as so many will know it) invocation; but it looms even larger now… and even though it’s a quote-inside-a-quote here, like the recent items I’ve seen that the Ambassador Bridge clearance squads had “snipers on the roof” (etc.), it really jumped out at me.

    Because it amounts to an entire independent set of reasons to refuse to go into any “major” city center in Canada, or even just park your truck for a spell, and quite regardless of any political support or lack of same for the “Freedom Convoy” or any of its principles.

    Namely, if you’re likely to fall afoul of Emergency Edicts (or whatever they’re really called), just by driving into an urban center like Ottawa — far less end up in a “violent confrontation” or end up getting “tagged” as some sort of “extremist” — then beyond some point, you’re going to have every reason to keep your very expensive equipment (and your priceless personal hide) “far and away from that.”

    It’s not a preference cascade, exactly; but it looks to me like a whole ‘nother kind of avalanche.

    I’ve heard some nice clips of someone, I believe Ottawa’s police chief, bleating about how the truckers’ protest was a “siege” and would not be tolerated. My reaction was, he has no idea what he’s talking about.

    My fear, at least sort-of by now, is he’s about to find out.

  32. North American general strike of truckers. And then the beleaguered health care workers. ” the ants harvest the food, the grasshoppers eat the food,” not anymore.

  34. I wish I could say the news from Canada surprises me, but I’ve been dreading it for a while. Trudeau is a weak little coward, and cowards are always the most vicious monsters when cornered. But if he thinks this is going to end things, he’s hilariously mistaken.

  35. The emergency powers act has a mandatory parliamentary review at seven days. Parliament can invoke their right to review as soon as three days from now. The right of review includes the right to end the state of emergency. Hopefully parliament will do the right thing and end the emergency.
    I have avoided calling the Canadian branch of the family as my aunt is having some medical issues. I may need to talk to them about their perceptions. I’ll check in when I do.

  36. Pingback: COVID mini-update, Valentine’s Day edition: Ontario drops mandates effective March 1; Douglas Murray in the Telegraph on New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, “performative empathy”, and Justin Brandeau; trucker solidarity demonstration in

  37. Oddly enough, I think God has many more surprises ahead for everyone. The black swan events will continue. Uncharacteristically cheerful for me (no, I don’t have a head injury).

    1. Yeah. I’m gloomy about things, and unhappy about a lot that’s going on. But I have faith that things will work out in the end.

  38. I would like to thank the ATF for making the case against any form of “red flag laws” far more effectively than I ever could.

    https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2022/02/14/atf-want-some-valentines-day-fun-jilted-lovers-let-us-take-revenge-on-your-ex-n448511

    Just think, any neighbor you’re feuding with, any psycho ex-girl/boy/genderfluid/whatever can arrange for you to be SWATted with a phone call…. especially if you’ve supported any wrongthinking candidates or causes.

    1. And just remember, folks, that a lot of states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and, of course, Washington D.C.) ALREADY have “red flag laws” which allow this 24/7/365.

      Florida surprised me; De Santis needs to push repealing that YESTERDAY. So should Youngkin in VA.

      1. Oregon

        –
        Trust me, we know. Heard of law being used once (probably more, but this case I know of). A case where people can point to and say “See! This is why it is needed!” Can’t disagree. But dang it. The tip top of a very slippery slope.

        Situation: 35-ish individual firing AR-15 and ranting in his own home, going outside to rant too. Neighbors call EPD. Not the EPD’s first rodeo with this individual. (Side note. Individual is why I pulled the retirement trigger. Incident occurred 3 months after my last day.) Individual is taken into custody, for endangering public safety, and mental health evaluation (you think?). Despite having no legal authority (he is well over 18) except under the Red Flag Law, mother gets remaining guns (not a few FYI) confiscated. IDK that he’d actually done anything legally, even if fined, or committed that would have gotten the guns confiscated regardless. Parents were extremely lucky their son/employee didn’t pull this at work. It was awfully close more than a few times, and getting progressively worse. (My decision came when I learned he owned guns. I was done if I couldn’t work from home. So, done.)

      2. Not going to be overturned in VA unless the state Senate flips in 2023. It’s already clear from the early days of this session that the Senate Democrats will vote in lockstep to keep their precious 2A violations.

  40. Anyway, my ‘You Short Sighted…’ post today shows that we were apparently thinking on similar lines.

    Wrote it SAturday, had some email hiccups.

    Possibly even along independent lines.

    I was actually worried that the politicians would come to their senses, avoid violence, and give up before my post went up.

    Shows that I may have an excess of optimism.

  42. I’m getting a 404 error (page not found) when I try to post. Trying once more…

    As I understand it, short of outright confiscation the independent truckers can choose what contracts they take. If they choose not to deliver into Ottawa, that’s their choice. “Sorry, I have another contract.” If half the truckers just stopped accepting contracts into Ottawa, it would cause a cascade of accelerating inflation because those who WOULD take those contracts would charge much more. If they could honestly say that they feared for their lives, it puts much more force behind it.

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