The Odessa Steps

by

The early Soviet propaganda movie, The Battleship Potemkin, culminates in a prolonged and shocking sequence of local citizens men, women and children gunned down by remorseless Czarist soldiers on Odessa’s famed harbor-to-town staircase. The sequence remains a shocker. (And is still studied in film schools, apparently, for being ground-breaking effective and technologically ahead of the time.) Historically, there was never such a massacre on the Steps, but the sequence served as a kind of cinematic shorthand for State brutality aimed at essentially harmless, unarmed, unthreatening civilians in a public place; civilians who were seen to be defying the authority of the State. And so the armed minions of the State acted because even the mildest defiance of Authority on the part of ordinary workers and their families is a stab at the heart of those Authorities. They cannot brook defiance, and so out come the armed police, just as they have this week in the streets of Ottawa with regard to the truckers protesting vaccine mandates. All the forces of the law, with the cheerful approval of the Canadian established media, the intellectual and ruling class it’s really rather breathtaking, this concentrated venom and enthusiasm for breaking heads and bones, all aimed at the workers participating in a civil and well-organized street protest. (It would seem that as far as the RCMP are concerned, Dudley Do-Right and Constable Benton Fraser both have left the building so much for Canadian ‘polite.’)

What will happen now that the ordinary working stiffs of Canada have been so casually abused by their native ruling class; threatened with having bank accounts frozen, their means of earning a living confiscated, themselves arrested, while their pets and children given over to the tender care of animal shelters and the child “protection” authorities? How far will this protest go now, bouncing down the Odessa Steps like a runaway baby carriage? It could be that Canadians, with the ethos of being polite, courteous, and truthful, may be truly shocked, shocked to the point of open rebellion over being consistently lied about and bullied by their ruling elite. In America, our own flyover country residents are perfectly accustomed to being abused as stupid, red-necked rubes by our own elite class. It’s what we have come to expect of NPR, the political ruling class, the New York/Hollywood cultural axis and the inside-the-Beltway-Washington DC denizens; what we have come to expect of them anyway. It may be a new and shocking development to ordinary, working-class Canadians, this contempt for the working class, though. Comment as you wish.

82 thoughts on “The Odessa Steps”

  1. When I think of the Mounties, I can only think of Sergeant Preston, his horse Rex and his dog King.

    Sergeant Preston would surely be against what is being done in his name by the Perth day Mounties.

  2. Seriously, how much longer can this go on. Sooner or later the Queen is going to need to get involved. This is a very bad look to her on her 75 jubilee.

    She could call out her Canadian army, put them between the truckers and fascists and broker some kind ok f back down by both.

    Justin could say “we will follow british policy” and eliminate masking and other sanctions.

    The truckers could say “that’s all we ever wanted” and go home and to work.

    If someone doesn’t do something I can see this becoming a us problem, not just a Canadian one.

  5. The RCMP has been objectively fascist for a very, very long time.

    When I was a teenager, my stepdad was looking at moving the family up into British Columbia. I went with him on a long road trip through the eastern part of BC, and we did a lot of “looking at real estate” and getting to know the locals. My stepdad had this knack for getting in with people, and it was amazing to watch how he’d manage to insinuate himself into people’s confidence.

    Factor in my life-long curse of having people tell me sh*t I don’t want to hear, and, well… Yeah. There were some… Interesting, yeah, that’s a really good word, interesting, conversations that I was both a participant and which I overheard.

    One of the guys we got to know fairly well was a retired RCMP higher-up… I want to say he was a Chief Superintendent when he retired, but I could be wrong. When we ran into him, he was selling real estate. In any event, he seemed like a decent enough sort, until he and my stepdad started sharing the stash of slivovitz my stepdad had along with us. After about the fourth shot, oh holy hell did the “In Vino Veritas” start coming out.

    Now, I’d intimated that I wanted a military career, and he was trying to sell me on a path into the Canadian Army and then the RCMP, kinda. That had been what he’d done, and it was something he was highly encouraging me to do, as a likely young lad.

    However, comma… I have to say that the difference between “subject” and “citizen” was never made more clear for me than during that afternoon/evening, sitting around the campfire at the camp we’d made. Attitudes and so forth, especially towards “first nations” and civilians? The disdain and utter lack of respect were pretty clear. I can’t even really articulate the vibe I was picking up from him, but I did get enough that I’m completely unsurprised to hear the things that we’ve been hearing about come out of Canada. The RCMP that could tolerate that guy’s attitude, cultivate it, and then promote it? Not a good institution, I fear. The stories about the RCMP are mostly myth; they’re not the force they project the image of.

  6. Much like the storied FBI, as the epitome of competence and disinterested ethics? I suppose that we shouldn’t be surprised now. Both organizations are and have been the beneficiaries of a long, long, long effort in positive public relations.

  7. John Henry, What reason do you have for thinking the Queen disapproves? She is literally surrounded by dozens of people who’s only job is to make sure that nothing she says in public can be interpreted as criticism of her ministers let alone anything like actual policy.

    The long term effects to Canadian comity depends on how many Canadians see themselves as potentially in the place of the trucker and how many identify with the government. As you saw with the Tea Party, a lot of Americans were fine with the low level harassment of the government as long as it wasn’t directed against them. Like us, it will come down to what happens in their next election. Like us, figuring out who to vote for that will be an improvement will also be a problem. The parliamentary form insures whoever is the next Prime Minister will have been voted for by a small number of people in one small area that can be relied on to vote the “right” way.

  8. A police that acts masked, badges hidden, rank obscured is a secret police, unworthy of a free nation, but totally suitable for Canada.

    The same Canadian Values on which the Liberal Party (note the name) has campaigned on and governed with and been voted into office for incarnating for decades.

    Pity the truckers””they believed the propaganda that they lived in one country, but they actually lived in another.

    Only guillotine can bring justice now.

  9. There may still be somewhere a copy of a film clip taken during the Iranian Revolution. The Shah had sent in the army against the protestors. One of the Iranian troops shot his officer in the back, ripped off his helmet, and ran across to join the protestors.

    The big surprise for me about the current situation is how great a gulf has grown between the police and the community they supposedly serve. Wherever you look — RCMP, Australian police, English police — it seems to be the same story. The police seem to act more like an occupying army than the guardians of safe communities.

    And it is not just the police. During the Lock Downs, many of us have been exposed to “Karens”, male as well as female, who appoint themselves enforcers of whatever they imagine that day’s policy to have been.

    History may give us some guidance about how all of this is likely to end — but I bet that most of us are not going to like it.

  10. In the words of a famous Canadian:

    Our battles they may find us
    No choice may our to be
    But hold the banner proudly
    The truth will set us free

    ”¦

    Yet when liberty lay wanting
    No lives were lost in vain.

    Wonder which way she jumped?

  11. Mcs,

    I have no idea one way or the other about the Queen’s approval.

    I can see this getting ugly and escalating, though. When it escalates enough, the army will need to get involved somehow. My crystal ball is no better at predicting the future than my glass eye is.

    I don’t know how they will get involved but however it is, Queen Elizabeth will need to sign off on it. It’s her army, not Canada’s. Nobody else can use it except as she delegates.

    The buck stops with her.

  12. It’s been clear for some years that neither Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand nor Australia any longer suffer under the handicap of freedom of speech. Is there the slightest doubt that the left, egregiously mislabeled as “liberal”, would do the same for us? We need to remember that a country can be either free or not and make decisions accordingly.

    A republic, if we can keep it.

  13. Something’s gone seriously wrong with police culture all over the world in the last couple decades. Seeing these thugs decked out in military tactical gear, fully masked up, beating people in the streets, running people over with horses, shows we’re in a really dark place. Don’t think it can’t happen here. This is what the powers that be want to see happen everywhere.
    The most jarring thing to me has been the twitter account of the Ottawa police, brazenly lying for 24 hours a day for the last several days, as if we all can’t see with our own eyes that they’re just lying. And the Canadian version of the MSM going along with it. I know it shouldn’t be surprising, but seeing just how brazen they are is unsettling. We all thought they were a bunch of commie frauds hiding behind values that we held dear and they held in contempt, but seeing the mask drop is difficult to make sense of. They remind me of the “bad guys” in professional wrestling announcing, where they would say the exact opposite was happening compared to what we can all see, but those guys are played for jokes, and this isn’t funny at all.
    Seems like Fidel Jr had to find people to actually do his dirty work. Had to fire the Ottawa police chief, and bring in new thugs. Quebec cops have always had a particular reputation for being dirty, something about French culture in general seems to stress that those who don’t follow whatever the authorities say are vermin who can be treated with any violence necessary.
    As has been said before, the real question is where are the “conservative” politicians right now–Fidel Jr has shut down Parliament and is abusing the citizenry, and the “conservative” “opposition” has vanished. Is there not a single one of them who realizes that being arrested right now is the surest way to raising your political profile and boosting your future career prospects?

  15. I support the police until they stop supporting the people’s “unalienable Rights” with which they were endowed by their Creator (applies to every person, not just Americans). When they beat civilians with rifle butts, hammer them with batons, and kick them in the head when they are down, they should be doxxed and made to fear that their homes will not still be standing when they go off shift. When mounted police drive their horses into crowds to knock people down and stomp on them, those horses should leave with their entrails dragging on the ground and the rider should not leave at all. Down the horse and you down the rider.

    Get a clue from Solzhenitsyn: “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

  16. That Solzhenitsyn quote is for a different time, for when there is open civil war.
    In our time, the regime wants dissidents to resort to violence. That’s the surest way for the regime to be able to destroy them all completely. Fidel Jr must be pulling his hair out wondering why there aren’t any good violent actions he can use to discredit the truckers, no matter how much he’s tried to provoke something. As soon as anything happens, he’ll be waving the bloody shirt and smashing everyone associated with the truckers at all. I suspect the American version is already massively infested with Feds, and they’ll commit all sorts of violence and mayhem in order to discredit any sort of legitimate opposition from growing.

  17. The police have been recruiting, selecting, training, and then promoting a lot of the precise wrong sort of people. Partially because the ones who should be doing the job, won’t. And, I can’t say as I blame them, in that they have been actively discouraged by all sides not to go into police work. It’s a soul-deadening line of work, just like prison guard.

    The other problem is that the system is not inculcating the right values, acculturating the cops to do the jobs that we as citizens expect them to be doing. And, on top of that? We don’t supervise or insist on accountability. The cops are a separate thing, a fraternity that is separate from society. People do not understand them, and they do not understand the normal law-abiding citizen because they do not do much with them. We’re all suspects, in their minds.

    I’ve got friends that have been doing police work, for years. The thing that’s struck me is how dark most of them become after enough time, enough experience. They expect the worst of everyone, mostly because that’s what they see of society. The dark underbelly. We’re all the bad guys, in their minds. That’s why they feel justified in doing the things they do, like in Ottawa.

    Society needs a drastic rework with this institution. If I were to suggest something, I would say that the separation between law enforcement and the general public has to come to an end. So long as both parties are standing there on either side of a dividing line, there is going to be trouble. I think that one thing which would break down that wall would be for a lot of law enforcement to be treated as a civic duty, just like jury duty. Retain professional police, of course, for investigation and training/oversight, but the line police duties ought to be mostly performed by normal citizens, precisely as though they were doing jury duty.

    You spend six months to a year dealing with the public, you’re going to have a hell of a lot more understanding of the crap police have to put up with–And, likewise, as a short-term cop, you know you’re going to be back on the other side of that badge in fairly short order.

    We need to end the dichotomy between the police and the general public. How we do that? Unsure, but we’d better figure it out.

  18. Anyone expecting to be saved from the jack booted foot on the neck by a shortage of jack booted thugs in any particular place is destined for an unpleasant surprise. Anybody that expects the authority paying for, recruiting and directing police to pay more than lip service to basic rights over compliance with the chain of command is living in a dream, soon to become a nightmare.

    This isn’t to say that there would be no resistance from within, just no effective resistance for long. Anyone trying will find themselves on the inside looking out very quickly.

  19. And, yet… We manage policing fairly well in many areas of the country. The local county here does not have the same bully-boy proclivities that you find in the more Democrat-dominated urban areas, and we still maintain a reasonable level of lawful behavior.

    Hmmmm. I wonder why. Is it perhaps because the local political climate does not encourage abuse, or tolerate it? What is the common denominator for all these regions with abusive police? Dare we say it?

    It’s disingenuous for Democrat politicians to claim the cops are abusive and bullying, when the majority of the regions of the country where they’re claiming this have been run by… Democrats. Portland? Democrat-run for generations, same with Oregon. Seattle? Democrat, again… For generations. Minneapolis? See a trend, here? It’s almost like the politicians involved in supervising the police have actually wanted these police abuses to happen, and have allowed them to grow and fester on their watch. If the Democrats wanted better, more professional policing that didn’t abuse the constituents, then why haven’t they made it happen?

    Truth is, that’s the face of the Democratic party, in reality. You rarely find “reform” candidates on their side, at the local level. They’re always part of the machine, corrupt, and enabling the very worst behaviors in people. I suspect that the things going on in Portland, Seattle, and Minneapolis that have put everyone up in arms about “police brutality” and abuses are precisely those things that the Democrats want to happen. Why? I have no idea, other than it’s just habit for them, and that they’ve no idea what they’re really doing.

    It’s odd that the areas of the country where there is actual competition between the parties or outright Republican dominance don’t seem to have as many problems with this sort of abuse and law enforcement chicanery. I wonder why…

  20. A question for any of the Canadian commenters here.

    I’ve mentioned before that the Canadian typify has no authority over the canadian military. They belong only to the queen and swear allegiance to her personally.

    Yesterday I saw 2 different articles saying that the emergency powers act gives the govt, Trudeau et al, ability to use the military to supplement the police.

    I found the full text of the act and did word searches for military, army and a couple other terms with no results.

    So is this fake news or am I missing something?

    Are there any circumstances under which the Canadian government can get to control the military?

  22. Having grown up in the military, I always thought the way that cops talked about “civilians” meaning non-cops was humorous, but it’s not so funny anymore.
    That local sheriff you voted for because he worked for the SWAT team in the nearby city and you think that means he can protect you from the gang-bangers ain’t gonna protect you from the government squashing you if you dare to step out of line…

  23. That Federalist article linked to above by Houska is interesting. It follows right along with much of the conspiracy accounts in RFK Jr’s book, “The real Anthony Fauci”. Bill Gates is becoming a strange figure. I think his wife divorced him when she found out about the Lolitas at Epstein’s island. Now, she has announced that she is not supporting his causes with her money. Strange doings going on. Conspiracy theories keep coming true.

  24. The whole thing is, from most of our standpoints, kabuki theater. We don’t know what these characters like Bill Gates are really doing, who they really are. For all we know, the whole Epstein thing could be down to people trying to discredit Gates, and he did nothing untoward.

    The thing you have to do is maintain awareness that all this crap is basically unverified information presented to you by people whose main interest is not to inform you, but to leave you bewildered and despairing in a hall of mirrors. You must maintain an open mind, and evaluate information as it becomes available to you, and never marry yourself to any particular set of ideas or explanations for what is going on. Too many of us settle on whatever we hear first, and refuse to change our minds about things or people once more information becomes available–Which is the whole point of the crap they did to both Trump and Palin, who I think was the prototype for the character assassination conducted on Trump.

    You have to be a witting observer, never taking anything at face value or trusting a particular source without question. None of the information channels we have are particularly trustworthy–They all have agendas, they all have things they want to sway you towards believing and acting on. Trust nobody and no source of information, even your own lying eyes, because in today’s world, it’s all to easy to produce convincing “evidence” that can make anything look real.

    The thing these assholes rely on is your credulous support. Withdraw that, and cease doing as they instruct. Do as you will, for yourself. If you refuse to participate and refuse to support those who do, then they are rendered powerless.

    Frankly, the mistake made by the Canadian truckers was to think that the model was the same Astroturf technique developed and used by the left; that’s a means and method they know how to counter, because it’s theirs. What we need, as opposition, is something else, something that hits them out of their blind spots, a means they don’t know how to counter. Thus, mass demonstrations and crowdfunding? Don’t do them, or at least, don’t do them the way the left does them. Going to Ottawa and staying there? Big mistake; you don’t want to be a fixed target.

    Withdraw support. Do things they don’t understand, or which they can’t easily counter. Don’t give them a fixed target.

    What I think would have worked better for the Canadian truckers? Simple refusal to serve the Canadian government or the other entities that support it. Quit servicing Ottawa and government agencies. Instead of parking in downtown Ottawa for weeks, making yourself a target, stay home with your truck. If you do want to make a scene, make a scene that’s too mobile, too unpredictable for them to deal with. You keep moving, keep doing the unpredictable. As well, don’t offer a leadership structure–That drives them nuts. They’re all creatures of the hierarchy, which free men are not. Keep them looking for that non-existent headquarters, that cabal which really isn’t there.

    Irish democracy. White mutiny. That’s the model; not demonstrations, not protests, not this “satyagraha” BS. That only works for the left, when it goes up against decent people with consciences. They are indecent people without morals or conscience, so doing the things that appeals to that sort of authority is a waste of time. You have to confound these bastards and simply starve them out. Rigid authoritarians can only get away with their mental illness when people cooperate with it. Cease cooperating, and watch them lose their shit. Don’t play their game; play your own.

  25. Yesterday I read one of the most profound posts I’ve come across – explains what is happeninkg in the West – from Brexit to the Truckers to Trump

    The “physical class” vs the “Virtual Class”

    The thinking classes are fatally removed from the physical side of life”¦ Their only relation to productive labor is that of consumers. They have no experience of making anything substantial or enduring. They live in a world of abstractions and images, a simulated world that consists of computerized models of reality – “hyperreality,” as it’s been called – as distinguished from the palatable, immediate, physical reality inhabited by ordinary men and women. Their belief in “social construction of reality” – the central dogma of postmodernist thought – reflects the experience of living in an artificial environment from which everything that resists human control (unavoidably, everything familiar and reassuring as well) has been rigorously excluded. Control has become their obsession. In their drive to insulate themselves against risk and contingency – against the unpredictable hazards that afflict human life – the thinking classes have seceded not just from the common world around them but from reality itself.

    https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/reality-honks-back?utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_source=url

  26. Another technique to confound the control freaks: Pick up their loads with your truck. Then, lose them. Imagine Ottawa and the Canadian government at a standstill because the wrong loads are delivered to the wrong places. How long does it take for the Canadian government to run out of, say… Paper? If the logistics that you control, as the guys driving the trucks, are all screwed up? Changed barcodes? Changed transponders on trailers? Fudged or destroyed manifests?

    Modern society relies on millions of people doing “what they’re supposed to” every single day, in the correct way. Use that. Complexity is a massive failure point, when properly utilized. Bills of lading lost? Trailers mis-routed? Cargo containers mis-manifested?

    The people actually doing the work have a lot of control over things. The guys down on the loading docks can bankrupt the company, which the assholes up in the white-collar offices never quite seem to learn. This is why Dyson wound up removing manufacturing from the UK to Singapore, really–Poisoned relations between the loading docks, factory floor, and the middle-management types who treated the workers with contempt.

    You can do the same thing across an entire country. That’s actually what really did in the Soviet economy, on a much less organized scale. The worker bees basically just quit believing the bullshit that the hive queen and her minions were telling them, and started doing for themselves. Without everybody willingly doing their piece, not a bit of it works.

    What’s been forgotten here is that the laptoperati have a social duty to the rest of us, just as we have power over them. Their food stops arriving, their shipments of “stuff” get lost…? What happens?

    Say, for example, that the independent owner/operators of Canada simply cease serving the Canadian government and the cities that support it. What happens next? They’re gonna mobilize the Army to go out to the ports and pick things up, separating loads, driving them to Ottawa?

    Anyone care to project how long it would take to shut Canada the fsck down, should the Canadian truck and transportation workers simply… Stop?

    The laptoperati who think they run things? They’ve made it pretty clear that they think the rest of us are their serfs. Treat them similarly. The reality is that a healthy society needs everybody working together, and the sad fact is that we really need to rub these assholes noses in that fact. Nothing in the modern world works effectively by means of coercion; lose the willing cooperation of the guys out actually doing the work, with their hands? The effect of that needs to be made clear to these wannabe feudal lords with laptops.

  28. The trucker’s strategy was fine, and perfectly carried out, with great discipline. And they had the support of Ottawa tow truck drivers, who refused to tow them, and Ottawa police, including the chief, who refused to crush them. Fidelito had to go nuclear and find thugs from elsewhere to follow his orders. He has nowhere else to go now, and the game’s not over yet, not by a long shot.

  29. I agree that it’s not over, yet, Mike. I think Trudeau is in for a bit of a shock about things, likely delivered in the near future.

    What I’m pointing out is that it’s a mug’s game to play things the way the left does. You’ll note that they’re essentially brazen and operating out in the open with things like donations to the Tides foundation, and don’t really care if they get doxxed, ‘cos they’ve nothing to fear–The thugs and bullies all work for them.

    Watch what happens when someone else decides to play the games by their rules, and nasty, nasty things happen to the people who donate to left-wing causes. The thing that a lot of these dipshits don’t grasp is that they’re children playing at the game of revolution; when the real heavies show up, they’ll play for keeps. And, without restraint.

    Once they push things far enough, well… Yeah. That’s how the poseurs and the freaks of the left got themselves the Nazis, back during the Weimar days. People looked out on the streets, saw the Spartacists and all that, didn’t like what they heard about what was going on with collectivization in the East, and, well… That was all she wrote. The idiots in the Antifa and Black Bloc mobs don’t have one ‘effing clue what they’re playing with. You may have seen this last weekend’s violence in Portland; that was Antifa taking on the local motorcycle gang. That did not go well for them, and I suspect that either learning has occurred, or they’re going to get a short, sharp shock when they find out that the real criminal element doesn’t play. Defunding the police looks really good, when you want it to enable your misbehavior… When it unleashes things like the gangs and organized crime that don’t care for your misbehavior causing them cash-flow problems…? Yeah; that’s going to end a lot differently than these “counter-culture” types think it will.

    The bastards like Trudeau have unleashed chaos, thinking they’ll benefit from it. The reality is, they’re really not that good at dancing along the knife-edge in the moonlit shadows of the forest they’ve allowed to grow up. The people who are good at that sort of thing? They’re still waiting to act, and I suspect we’ll see them come out of the darkness before long.

    Every action has a reaction. In physics, it’s all nice and clean–You get the same energy out that you put into it. In human affairs? LOL… There ain’t no telling what you’re going to have happen. You push the pendulum of social matters off-center, and it will come back the other way, harder and faster. Sometimes, exponentially so. You just don’t know, which is why I have always recommended caution when doing these things–Sure, the Overton window can be shifted, but the thing you have to recall is that that window ain’t set in stone. You move it successfully? It might move again, either of it’s own accord or someone else conducting push-back operations on you.

    I really don’t think the current state of affairs with regards to this gender BS is going to last, or represents a real lasting change. It’s been forced, and unnaturally so. The recoil of that hasn’t begun to be felt, yet.

    Care to imagine the result, thirty-forty years from now, of all these young women who were “encouraged” into becoming transitional not-women? Who had their breasts cut off, wombs removed? Who took insane amounts of chemicals to resemble men? What, do you suppose, these childless women are going to do to society and the people that allowed and encouraged that to be done to them? Do you think they’re going to live their now-childless lives out peacefully and without recriminations on those who did what they did, and who enabled it all…?

    Yeah. The “gender wars” ain’t over, yet. The recoil on that aspect ain’t even begun to be felt. I would wager that there will be a spate of these “LGBTQ activists” getting hunted down and murdered, about like some of the victims of child molestation went after their own abusers.

    Also, ask yourself how those chemically and physically de-feminized former women are going to be voting, and what their politics will look like. Think they’ll be grateful to the left? Happy with it? Will they be happy with those on the right, who looked the other way in “tolerance”?

    Interesting times are coming, I’m telling you.

  33. Another technique to confound the control freaks: Pick up their loads with your truck. Then, lose them. Imagine Ottawa and the Canadian government at a standstill because the wrong loads are delivered to the wrong places. How long does it take for the Canadian government to run out of, say”¦ Paper? If the logistics that you control, as the guys driving the trucks, are all screwed up? Changed barcodes? Changed transponders on trailers? Fudged or destroyed manifests?

    Doing that would be just so wrong.

    However, if every ambiguity and omission in paperwork or labeling or pallet stacking pattern load sequence — especially for hazardous cargo — were closely scrutinized and stopped for corrections … well, that’s just ensuring public safety.

  34. I doubt the number that actually do the gender reassignment will add up to enough to form a significant polity. I think we’re hearing about the same small number of individuals over and over from different sources that magnify the real number in popular perception.

    Not so, the number reminded every month just how much the cost of their education exceeds its value. The real question is how many “debt relief” advocates think they can come up with the money versus those that are just using the chimera to string the gullible along. There is the question of reimbursing those that have already paid that would multiply the astronomical cost. What’s few trillion dollars more? Then there’s the reminder we all get every time we stop at a gas station or grocery store that elections have consequences.

    Since there are probably more takers than makers by now, this isn’t going away.

  35. The Canadian Parliament has just voted to support and extend Trudeau’s tyranny. Biden’s handlers are watching this with great interest. Now, Democrats are trying to say no “insurrectionist” can occupy a seat in Congress. Insurrectionist is defined as someone who questioned the 2020 election result.

  36. There’s probably still time for Canadian conservative politicians to step up, but the time is running out incredibly fast. They should have gotten themselves arrested with the truckers over the weekend. As it is, Blackface Hitler is going to have them arrested eventually anyway at his leisure. These “states of emergency” don’t go away.
    I have no idea what the Canadian legal system is like, or why they can’t stop this. I am pretty confident that the US courts would immediately stop the Democrats from doing anything like this, no matter how much they would like to, and the courts can’t be ignored, not yet at least. But sitting right here, it is amazing to think how lucky it was that the system was caught with their pants down and Trump got elected and was able to nominate three supreme court justices. A liberal court right now would let the Democrats do literally anything they wanted.
    Buckle up, and chin up. It’s gonna be a rough ride from here on out, but I still say in the long run we win.

  37. What they’re doing is basically delegitimizing the entire Canadian government, and making it all the more likely that there’s going to be a real Wexit where Canada winds up being a bankrupt coalition of the various eastern provinces, BC, and probably some of the Arctic. Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba are very likely to leave the confederation now, and we’ll see how that goes.

    Trudeau and his enablers have just committed political suicide, and don’t even know it. They could have dealt with this peacefully and made it clear that there are no second-class Canadians. But, what’s happened is that the Eloi have made it clear to the Morlocks that they’re not good enough to have a voice, soooo… Yeah. Buckle up, soon-to-be Former Canadian Provinces of Ontario, Quebec and the rest. The western provinces are probably done with all that wealth transfer, and I wonder how Trudeau intends to make up for all that money that’s been flowing to Quebec since the 1960s…? Of course, they’re going to try to landlock the western provinces, but I’m fairly certain that won’t work, over the long haul.

    Huge ‘effing mess of their own making, though. Idiots, the lot of them.

  38. Brian, Kirk

    (1) The vote is in on sustaining the emergency order for 30 days, at which time it must be reasserted/revoted. Sustained 185/151 on an absolute party line vote. Libs, NDP all for, Conservatives/BlocQ all against. No one stood up to defy the whip because this was considered a vote of confidence. (follow up through ourcommons.ca and look up Vote Nr. 32)

    (2) Still a lot of hypocrisy flying about – Singh, the NDP leader, has openly stated that he does not like the measure but won’t yield the authority he currently has, as the swing cote, to influence the government to the left. In the end, it’s all about power. Quelle surprise.

    (3) Contrary to what a lot of sentiment here desires, the real test was -not- last night. Some things take time to ripen. The real test will come in 30 days if/when we see whether anyone on the Liberal backbench has the spine to defy the whip. It would take 18 defections in either Lib or NDP to call a snap. It might take more than one 30 day cycle for the snowball to build momentum (Consider how long it took the Pelosicrats to drumbeat for impeachment here) Clearly the Libs are thinking that, now that the nasty truckers have been made invisible, they can ride this out. In the meantime, the provinces are all following their own course and not taking Ottawa’s lead. If Justin the Good continues to overreach, however, the cascade could come rather quickly -after- a handful of backbenchers stand up.

    (4)I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade here, but if you are thinking that Alberta/Saskatchewan are suddenly going to bolt the confederation, you are probably dreaming. It’s still Canada…while superficially similar, the cultural difference between them and us goes a lot deeper than is immediately apparent. They aren’t impressed with either Trump or Biden narrative, they don’t want to subordinate themselves within the hyperpower, etc. In theory, it may take up to Oct 24 when the current government mandate expires, but I’d be placing wagers that we see another fall election if things don’t quiet down quickly.

  39. @MidwestObserver,

    I’m curious… How many actual Western Canadians do you know? All of the ones we are in contact with are pissed, right now–Even the ones who’d never talked about breaking the confederation before.

    I don’t think that they particularly want to be part of the US, either–They just want to be left the hell alone, which Ottawa seems incapable of. There’s going to be fallout from this, no matter what–Especially as they continue to go after people who merely donated to the the truckers.

    Where this is going, and where it winds up…? Nobody has a damn clue, not us, not the participants. Which is what makes this so damn stupid–It’s like the idiots in the Austro-Hungarian Empire who were playing around with their response to Serbia after Sarajevo. They’re escalating, thinking that they’ve got all the power when they really, truly do not.

    All you have to do to break up something like Trudeau’s Canada is to withdraw consent and participation. That’s in more danger of happening than Trudeau or his handlers recognize, being as they are essentially just ignorant wannabe thugs that don’t understand how the people who don’t live virtually think and conduct themselves. A price will be paid for this, but the question is, what? I have no more idea than you do, but I think this is a much more grave situation than you recognize.

  40. Kirk

    I know a few
    And, yes, they are pissed at Ottawa, even more than the -natural- state of affairs, definitely as much as they were in the Reform party days.

    I’m not underestimating the gravitas here by any means and I’m certainly not underestimating Justin the Good’s ability to cheese off an electorate (considering that, before this, he had already called – and wasted – two utterly useless snap elections on much more trivial grounds.)

    Some insights, after watching Canadian politix for a -long- time. The revenge, -when- it comes, is most likely going to come at the polls, but it’s not going to happen in the very short-term time expectation that a lot of people have. First of all, the provinces are already going their own way. Even Fordist Ontario and Quebec, the liberal heartland, have already stated to dismantle the Covid regime. The key is -not- the West (they are -always- pissed, except for the BC commune), the key is whether a swing develops in the suburban ridings (sound familiar), especially in Ontario. Like a dam break, at first it’s subtle and then, suddenly, it comes crashing down. I wouldn’t rule out an outcome like, IIRC, 1994 when the (then) Progressive Consrvatives were virtually eliminated from Parliament lock, stock, and barrel (paving the way for Reform as an unanticipated development). To get that swing, (1) Justin must continue to be himself, obnoxious and overplaying his hand, (2) the petty injustices – and inflation – afflicting the suburbans have to accumulate and the media have to stay on the case (no, -not- the CBC….), (3) a few backbenchers need to stand up…once two or three defy the whip, you get momentum.

    Will this actually come to pass? Like you, I dunno. If pressure is maintained, it’s a lot more likely. If it goes to the back pages in 90 days or so, then less likely but still possible. Perhaps the “Conservatives” will actually find a leader. Perhaps the horse will learn to sing

  41. Ooops. One -more- thing (after having gone on too long as it is)……

    Watch to see if Justin the Good becomes a serial abuser of the social banking regime he has used the emergency to justify. If enough suburbanites find themselves caught up in the grinding of the gears – account blockages, petty harassment of people on the periphery or uninvolved – that could provide the seed. Look at what has happened down here with the reaction to masking children at school and/or CRT indoctrination. A similar wave could build up there, just needs a different catalyst to set the process in motion.

    If Justin is -smart- ( a very large assumption to be sure_) he’ll try to relieve pressure by letting the emergency order expire after 30 days while keeping the banking powers alive for futue selective deployment..

  42. You’re awfully sanguine about the “banking powers” that are the government giving itself the power to steal your money with no due process just for your political positions. That’s not wait a few years to give electoral feedback stuff, it’s more like rope and lamppost stuff.

  43. I’m not being sanguine in the least. I see it for exactly what it is. But it is going to take more than a few days news cycle for it to affect the everyday life of enough Canadians to catalyze a change. It will come, just not as overnight as you are hoping for.

    Look at how many rope and lamppost actions we’ve seen down here over the last decade. Yet the lampposts are remarkably uncluttered. (We are, however, getting -new- lampposts thanks to the infrastructure bill……snark, snark….I’m waiting for the line about giving the libs the lampposts from which they will be hanged….). We’re just now getting -serious- pushback and, where is it coming from, suburban moms……who knew?.

    What keeps driving me to push back is a Heinleinian observation – you know when a civilization is failing when you see it progressively lose its ability to think in spans of time and things devolve into yet another false dialectic i.e. -now- or -never-.

    The process will be helped along if we see further creative civil disobedience. Maybe not another convoy, but other events happening on a more localized basis. If the convoy turns out to be a one-and-done, then change will take longer to build momentum and may be blunted by the passage of time. It does amaze me that none of the punditry have been able to tap into the civil disobedience themes in depth. Had a discussion with one of my more liberal colleagues a few days back, wondering why the local constabulary wasn’t immediately pushing the truckers out. Went through a long (masked) countercase asking him how he would address matters if, in a modest size American town – maybe in the middle or the country, maybe elsewhere – divided by a strategic bridge over a river and having a significant portion of its population disrespected by the local governing elite for nigh on decades. Suppose that population went to the bridge, parked their cars and started to have a picnic … for a few days. No violence, no hygiene issues, just a nice peaceable picnic. How would he resolve it? He replied – have the police move the out with the means at their disposal. I asked if this meant he was supporting Bull Connor and, since the colleague in question is a -big- civil rights history follower, I had to wait a few minutes for him to recover his composure.

    I also put out that I consider it quite possible that you will see the revenge of the polls within the current year, first at the provincial and then at the federal level. .

  44. Shorter answer: One of the pathologies of our self-absorbed and narcisscistic [sic] society is that, for most people, as long as these are things that happen to -other people- and -their-life is not inconvenienced in the least, they are dismissive and passive-aggressive about addressing things, even those that are existentially threatening.. Only when it happens to them -personally-will they take up action. Look at the suburban moms thing – a good many, probably the majority, are not Trumpian – purple at best, blue in some cases – and, as long as these things only happened in the school district downtown, it was off their radar screen. When it hit -their- kids directly, -then- action.

  45. “Look at how many rope and lamppost actions we’ve seen down here over the last decade”
    Can you name something that’s anywhere in the universe of these “banking powers”, in your opinion? Doesn’t seem like a slight escalation to me…

  46. I have to say, and I can only do so because I’m a random internet anonymous nobody, that in looking at the Canadian journalists and activists discussing the truckers and their crushing, that it looks like Canada imported a bunch of authoritarians from countries that have zero interest in free speech, or freedom of any sort, to populate their “elite” media and political levels.

  47. That’s my point….it’s not by any means a -slight- escalation. It’s a transformative one, an existential one. -I- know that,-you- know that. Most haven’t figured out just how existential it is and then, as I just posted, “well,, it only affects -those- people, or -other- people, or someone downtown or whatever, it doesn’t affect -me. I’m alright, Jack.””, Only when it bites -them- in the tail -personally-, does the lightbulb go off. And it will take time for the cumulative number of tailbites to build to a critical mass.

    This is not a case of “waiting for an epithany” to spark the masses. It does realize that, like any process, it needs constant inexorable development and buildup. Go back and look at our revolutionary history for timing.

    And, down here, the tendency to pursue extrajudicial and/or “administrative guidance” measures – cf. Pelosi and Co. – is potentially every bit as existential. Look at what Biden’s proposed appointments to the Fed are standing for – an ESG driven social banking and allocation role right out of the Middle Kingdom.

  48. Follow up to the 9.22AM post.

    (1) No, they are just being Canadians – the loyal subjects of the Crown who chose not to revolt. The conception of government and the role of the individual v the state is more in line with (Commonwealth) Britain, not North American. We tend to take our norms for granted and then project them everywhere rather than see the local culture. You have no idea just how much of a miraculous exception we really are, even now.

    (2) Despite the addition of a formal “Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms” back in 1982, it’s still a pastel concoction and not the bright colors and delineations we have here. What Ottawa giveth…..etc. etc. A legacy of the Westminster parliamentary model and the implied unwritten British constitution.

    (3) The Canadian judicial system is tame compared to ours. Their Supreme Court hasn’t built the same level of standing as ours (no matter what one may think of certain decisions)

    (4) Recent immigration has made a difference, particularly in BC, metropolitan Toronto/Ontario, Montreal, etc. but a far bigger change comes from technical and society change. Go back and call up the substack link that Bill Brandt posted a few days back – just like us, they have segregated into the Virtuals (their clerisy) and the Physicals (all the rest of us). Their Virtuals are every bit as self-absorbed and self-righteous as ours once you get under the veneer. .

  49. One more one last thing (sheesh..I’m getting tedious)

    Just like here, you need to cultivate media sources. Do not depend on CBC or CTV or The Globa and Mail. The substack Bill cited and I mentioned is good, look for Rebel News, etc., National Journal, Toronto Sun, etc.

    They are going through the same media transitions and transformations we are.

  50. Midwest Observer: “I also put out that I consider it quite possible that you will see the revenge of the polls within the current year, first at the provincial and then at the federal level.”

    We have to look to experience. In the US, we elected a Republican-controlled House, a Republican-controlled Senate, and a “Republican” President. The Congress-scum spent their time undermining the President and accomplished nothing except for paybacks to their big donors. Or we could look to the UK which voted in a “Conservative” government which is functionally almost indistinguishable from a Labour administration.

    The chances that we can vote our way out of the current mess are very low.

  51. They’re fencing off the Capitol again, trying to normalize “emergency” rule. Only bad things can come of this. Very very bad.

  52. Brian: “They’re fencing off the Capitol again …”

    Let’s hope that is to keep the Congress-scum inside! :)

  54. Gavin:

    That’s exactly why I provisoed my comment: “Perhaps the “conservatives” will find a leader…perhaps the horse will learn to sing….”

    It’s not excluded but it needs a strong catalyst continuously applied. Otherwise you only get a partial reversal of the administrative state, if that.

    Harper? Paging Mr. Steven Harper….you have a call waiting at the white courtesy phone…….

  55. When the whole thing blows up, which I think is nearly certain, the idiots running the whole thing will be left there with Wiley Coyote scorch marks, going “I didn’t know the cannon was loaded…”.

    I do not see this ending well. If the people like Trudeau were competent, then maybe they’d get away with it. But, mendacious, stupid, unable to comprehend reality? That’s a recipe for a huge mess. Trudeau and his coterie make decisions based not on reality, but on ideology. That ideology is increasingly at odds with what is going on in the real world.

    If, as some are pointing out, we are going into a new Ice Age due to solar activity? What will Trudeau do? How will he help Canada adapt to a new reality, where its resources are inaccessible and the growing seasons so much shorter? Is he going to negotiate with China to take in his now-frozen out population?

    These idiots are dangerous not because they seek power, but because they do not know how to wield it, nor do they understand the world around them. Ideology blinds them, and when they make every decision by first defining the problem in terms of that ideology, consulting it, and then acting in accordance with it? LOL… The results, in a chaotic universe, can be nothing but horrible.

  56. @MikeK – I remember that post. And with the recent essay I am thinking of a polarized West divided into the “Physicals” and the “Virtuals”, with the “Virtuals” always waiting for “Someone” to solve whatever problem.

    And in this context, Trump is a “Physical” – he builds things.

    Someone brought up an essay about Peter Drucker from the 90s, predicting this.

  57. Just signed up with the Brownstone Institute – that should put my name on more than one list.
    https://brownstone.org/ Here’s MY catch 22. We scheduled a trip to France (this will be the 4th try, original was scheduled May 2020). I had been vaccinated in March 2021 before setting out on 3 trips from August to December. In December, shortly after the CDC lifted my vaccination certificate by classifying me as “not up to date” ie not vaccinated, I came down with Omigosh, er Omicron. Over Christmas, when there were no over the counter tests available and my health care provider wasn’t taking calls. All the walk in tests were fully scheduled by the worried well eager to insure that they wouldn’t be killing Grandma while celebrating Christmas. So I survived those 3 days, drank a lot of water, took sinus pills and paid for an antibody test. Now I need a “booster” to travel, since my travel provider has legal problems with ignoring the CDC “advisory”, but it is not recommended to get it within 3 months of having COVID. Get a doc’s cert, you say, But my doctor left during covid and the practice is not giving certs out because … well they don’t want to be on the wrong side of the government.

  58. Well, the Russians are in eastern Ukraine and this is what is coming out of the Biden regime.

    “NEW: In a conference call with reporters on responding to Putin, and what comes next, a senior admin official suggested that Russian troops in Donetsk/Luhansk *alone* may *not* warrant the “swift and severe” sanctions the admin has been previewing.

    SAO: “Russian troops moving into Donbas would not itself be a new step. Russia has had forces in the Donbas for the past 8 years.” But the SAO did say there will be additional sanctions imposed tomorrow.”

    There goes Biden’s Nobel Peace Prize, but maybe not. After all, Obama got one before his chair was warm. I don’t know how this plays in the November election.

  59. It’s theater, managed by morons, who expect that this kabuki dance is going to enable them to prop Biden up with a faked event. Likely, the fix has been in for months, negotiated in secret, and we’ve just been played–This was an event meant to give BidenCo. something to crow about at the State of the Union address.

    Again. Just like Afghanistan, which was meant to give him something to do on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

    I feel like a glitched voice chip, repeating myself incessantly, but… The only thing any of this shows is that Biden is managed by idiots. Idiots who have no idea at all about what they’re doing, or where these things could spin out of control.

    Look at Afghanistan, where they’re looking at millions starving. It’s a humanitarian crisis, likely to blow up in international media if they don’t manage to damp it down. Did BidenCo. consider that as an issue? Can they get any kind of humanitarian aid package through, or are they going to ignore the whole issue and hope it goes away?

    Russia wants all of Ukraine back, just like Belorussia. Will they get it, by the end of BidenCo. running things?

  60. Maybe Putin is showing the way forward.

    Saskatchewan, Manitoba and or Alberta declare themselves independent republics.

    Our congress passes laws requiring recognition.

    A year later they petition for statehood.

  62. The US government’s erosion of fundamental rights (free speech, free assembly, due process) for non-Democrats will accelerate our authoritative governing as well.

  63. MO.

    “If Justin is -smart- ( a very large assumption to be sure_) he’ll try to relieve pressure by letting the emergency order expire after 30 days while keeping the banking powers alive for future selective deployment..”

    All of the banking powers ALREADY EXISTED in current Canadian laws dealing with “money laundering” and “anti-terrorism” laws. The only thing the EA did was try to extend those laws to “crowdfunding” sites and crypto currencies. See paragraphs 2-4. BTW, the US has the same laws here, via Patriot Act and “Know Your Customer Act”.

    https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/02/20/democracy-dies-in-canada-trudeau-government-to-make-some-of-their-new-authoritarian-measures-permanent-n1560716

  65. Doesn’t surprise me one bit.

    Most of the people in government, especially the mid- and upper-ranking types, have zero contact outside their bubbles. They don’t know any working-class types at all, and aside from having the odd service-type worker come fix something for them, they never will.

    Thus, oikophobia. They don’t know, therefore they don’t understand, therefore they fear.

    This is not a good recipe for civil discourse. They’ve no idea how many “others” are out there, or what they really think. When the government finally overreaches enough to provoke widespread resistance and revolt, they’re going to be utterly astounded at what happened, because of that fact.

    I blame modern academia for a lot of it. There’s this huge disconnect between the “college” types, and the rest of us, and that’s due primarily to how they are indoctrinated in the schools. There’s no contact, for example, between architects/engineers who do design and the trades that execute those designs. The antipathy and contempt that grows up between the various sides is a symptom of this. Most tradesmen (somewhat correctly…) regard the college-educated design/engineering types as a bunch of dolts who’ve no idea how to actually do things, and the architect/engineers regard the trades as a bunch of half-wits that couldn’t hack college.

    Not a recipe for civilizational success, in my book. We’ve allowed way, way too much disconnect between the theorizers and the practitioners–What was that politician who went into business for himself, and then discovered how onerous and useless most of his work as a politician had been? I can’t find his name with a quick search, but I remember it being a famous and influential Senator from the midwest…

    Curing this? I’d say it’s pretty simple: No career politicians or bureaucrats in the managerial levels. Long-career advisors? Sure; decision-makers about regulation and everything else? Nope; those need to be people with some actual contact with the general public, how it lives, how they work, and all the ways that the government impacts that.

    Most of the idiots we have in governance have zero clue that there are even such things as second- and third-order effects of the things they demand. That absolutely has to change. I guarantee you that if the morons making decisions about things like appliance “efficiency” had a single ‘effing clue about what is actually going on out in people’s homes, they’d be singing a different tune. I just got done talking to a client about their kitchen appliances, and the one thing that was mentioned was that they absolutely wanted a dishwasher that they didn’t have to cycle twice to get the dishes clean… “High efficiency”, my ass–Run that bastard twice, and you’re using half again as much energy as you were when the old-school appliances were prevalent. The whole thing is just kabuki-theater cost shifting. “Energy Star” really boils down to “Run that fscker twice to get clean dishes and clothes…”.

  67. “We’ve allowed way, way too much disconnect between the theorizers and the practitioners ..”

    I am coming round to the point of view that one of America’s finest hours was when Elvis Pressley was drafted into the army to do National Service. It made an unequivocal statement that We Are All In This Together.

    A milestone along the US’s path to degradation was the Vietnam-era decision to allow draft deferments for college students.

    Restoring National Service for everyone would go a long way to breaking down the barrier between the “symbolic analyst” class and the people who actually get things done. In fact, it would be wise to make successful completion of National Service a prerequisite for college admission.

  68. No. Just… No.

    The era of mass-conscription draftee armies is over. Not until we reach another cusp point in the never-ending battle between the battle between effectiveness of mass vs. complexity.

    You cannot train someone to be an effective soldier with today’s technology without several years more than you can afford to keep them out of the job market, and you don’t really need all that many people in uniform, anyway.

    Not to mention that you really do not want to be dealing with half-ass people that don’t want to be there when you’re playing around with the munitions and techniques available today. Draftees in today’s military environment are more a drag than they are anything else.

    You want to do social engineering? Do it somewhere else, not the military. The military is not there to undo your societal ineptitude at socializing members–It exists to fight and win wars, nothing else. You want social engineering? Then, do something that actually addresses the problems you’re perceiving, rather than off-loading responsibility and effort onto the military, where it will never be anything other than a distraction.

    The mass conscript army really died circa 1970. It was on life-support throughout the 1960s, but when we started issuing crypto devices and night vision to even the most non-elite line infantry and others…? That BS went right out the window. In today’s world, a mass conscript army is basically just a target for a professional military, one that they can virtually kill at will. The problem is that you can’t train them to run the equipment or conduct the sophistication of the operations that are prevalent today in the time that is available to a draftee force.

    Of course, you could do like the Romans did and only draft a selection of the public for 25 years, or so… I think the Tsars did something like that, as well.

  69. What Kirk said – a two-year draft is not long enough to each a conscript anything useful, especially to someone who doesn’t want to be there in the first place.
    You want a draft to solve social problems? Maybe a draft for non-military social service. Set them to building wilderness trails, helping to pick up trash in the parks, trying to teach pre-K numb-skulls to read. And a thousand other social chores for a year or two.
    Anything but military service.

  70. Sgt. Mom: “You want a draft to solve social problems? Maybe a draft for non-military social service.”

    That would be fine. The point is National Service as a mixing pot and as a pre-requisite for entering college and maybe even for voting. It really does not matter what the conscripts do as long as they all are treated the same and work on something physical.

    If there are better solutions for breaking down the barriers between the “college” types and the rest of us, let’s hear them! The problem won’t go away because you don’t like the solution.

  72. Wiley Coyote is always running off the edge of a cliff. Typically there’s a 2-3 second take where he is in thin air, legs pumping madly, before he drops straight down.

    That was the image that immediately came to mind when I read about Justin T a few minutes ago.

    Monday he invoked and today he revoked the enmeshed fascism act. Not just some of it, apparently the whole Megillah.

    Good on Canada for some sense.

    Now I’m curious what happened. Doesn’t seem like it spoiled have been politicians. Not this quickly though it could have.

    I wonder if the word came down from on high “you silly boy. You are making my colony look bad. Worse than that, you are making me look bad. If you won’t get rid of that fascist act RIGHT NOW, in the next 5 minutes you are no longer my prime Minister and I will find someone who will.”

    I’m happy for the turnaround and have no knowledge what caused it. I am curious, though

  73. What happened in Canada? Precisely what I have been saying would happen: The governed have removed their consent, and begun to stop participating in the charade. That was what precipitated all this–The run on the banks. Canadian friend of the family related that they spent half the day yesterday in line with all sorts of people taking money out of CBC. The tellers and managers were all panicked, because they did not have the money to pass out–He reported at least three armored car deliveries during the time he was there. That ain’t normal.

    You have farmers with millions of dollars in their accounts pull the funds out of your bank, you’ve got issues. Big ‘effing issues, when it’s a majority of your depositors. You may want to fantasize you’re a big-business type of bank, but if all the little guys come taking their money out…? Buh-bye…

    Like I said: They have woken a sleeping, previously apathetic giant. The Overton window, I suspect, is about to be moved back. Recoil is happening, the pendulum has begun the backswing, and I’d highly, highly recommend you get the fsck out of the way.

    If the Canadian Senate would have slapped Trudeau’s hand, later next week? That would have been one thing; the fact that he’s shut this crap down, now? That’s telling, that is–Someone, somewhere behind him is waking up to reality, and panicking. Look for more of this, as people sense their power. All you have to do to crash the system these assholes have set up is to withdraw your consent, and cease participating or supporting it. They cannot survive that, and while they may not realize it yet, someone got a wakeup call this morning. I’d love to know who made that call to Trudeau, and precisely what precipitated it, because it had to be big.

    Imagine just 10 percent or so of your depositors pulling their funds out, and consider the effect on your bottom line. If the numbers were higher…? If they were big depositors? I think that may be what did it.

    Like I said… Trudeau: Gone before the end of summer. Maybe even the beginning of it. Hell, possibly before the end of spring…

  74. @Gavin Longmuir,

    I’m leery of any of this “social duty” bullshit. You want to bring people together? You want society to “know itself”? You aren’t doing that with some happy-dappy “Public Service Mandate” like a Civilian Conservation Corps. Those things are mostly BS, and ginned up by socialist dreamers who’re delusional about these things. If you’re doing the same crap as the Nazis and the Communists, or even FDR, you’re doing it wrong.

    You want to solve the damn problem? Really, truly solve it? You need to act on the real cause of it, the way we indoctrinate assholes in colleges to think that they’re better than everyone else. The reality is that today’s college experience isn’t proof of much of anything, besides the ability to pay tuition and sit on your ass somewhere on schedule for four years. I can certainly attest to the fact that whatever the hell it is they’re providing in these institutions, it ain’t what my grandparent’s generation was thinking of when it said “Education”.

    The problems are not going to be solved with some panacea “program”. The real deal is where Mike Rowe is at, what he talks about in all of his recent work. You want to fix people’s attitudes on both sides of the line? You have to have mutual respect, and that ain’t going to be established by mixing the two communities for a couple of years before they go off to college or the work force.

    I think we’ve been doing education wrong, for years. The model of academia as first established in the Middle Ages is where we get most of our ideas about it–Oxford, Padua, all that jazz. The thing is, those were institutions meant for the idle rich, those that were not truly contributing to society in the first damn place. In the early days, you didn’t go to college to learn engineering–You either taught yourself through trial-and-error, or you sought out a mentor who did the work. There were no academic programs that produced men like Vauban and Brunel.

    The paradigm needs to shift, I believe. Education is a wonderful thing, and I recommend it to anyone who has the interest and the aptitude. But, as we’re doing it, today? Dude… I’m a guy with a friggin’ Associate’s Degree, and a great deal of curiosity. I’ve probably read more damn books than any 20 or so of your average modern college graduates, and I didn’t do it because it was on some syllabus: I did it because I was curious and wanted to learn. I remember and retain most of those books, even if I can’t find the cite I might need in an argument. Now, compared to most of the “college educated” I know and encounter? Sweet babblin’ baby Jesus… These people are major ignoramuses, many of whom I’ve heard boasting that they haven’t read a book since graduating from their university or college. Some of them have spouted off crap from outside their narrow field of “education” that has left me in awe of their ignorance and utter lack of ability to think critically. We’ve been using college diplomas that really don’t mean jack as discriminators for people being hired and given employment, and that’s just… Nuts. I know plumbers that have a better grounding in the humanities than some of the engineers and architects that produce our plans, and some other tradespeople that can produce better, more workable plans than these overly-credentialed dimwits manage to create after being paid tens of thousands of dollars for their “expertise”.

    We’re doing it wrong, I think. And, any “social duty” BS would be doing more wrong, in that it really won’t help. The problem is what and how we’re teaching these idiots in the universities and colleges, the main lesson of which seems to be that they’re better than everyone else, smarter, better-looking, and God’s gift to run the world. They should be being taught a humble truth: They’re no better than anyone else, there’s no particular virtue to being able to sling numbers and words better than some guy with a wrench, and if they don’t take that to heart, that guy with the wrench is eventually going to get fed up with their entitled bullshit, and clock them over the head with it.

    The educated are emphatically not nature’s noblemen, entitled to technocratically run the world. For one thing, it’s a function of garbage in, garbage out–Most of what these twats have been taught is propaganda that doesn’t actually work, and they’ve never been held to a standard and forced to produce. There’s accountability for a plumber, by God–You hire someone to fix your drains after they back up, and return home to find a bill and your basement still filled with raw sewage? You don’t pay that guy, and you find someone who can actually solve your damn problem. You hold the plumber accountable. Some dipshit with a degree in “social work” tells you that they’re gonna solve the homeless problem? Ain’t no accountability there, now is there? Y’all just keep right on paying that bill, never mind that where there were a few thousand homeless, we now have 20 or 40 thousand of them, and they’re crapping all over the streets, while you can’t let your kids play in the parks you pay for.

    That is the real problem, right there: The idea that the college-educated are some sort of enlightened class of god-like beings who can do no wrong. That’s the source of this problem, and to get past it, you need to act on the actual reasons it exists–Which are mostly in the educational system. The ability to pass a test is not an indicator of virtue, a sign that you are a superior being. All it means is that you have an aptitude for a particular sort of abstract work, and that’s about it.

  75. A cashless society has been the wet dream of the government since the thought first occurred to somebody. We should be grateful to lil’ Fidel for reminding people just what that would look like, at least the ones too dim to take note of developments in China.

    It’s been pointed out elsewhere that they don’t even need some sort of dramatic announcement to do the same here between the “Patriot” act and war on drugs. In theory, some would take a judge’s sign off. The Russian collusion hoax shows that all it takes for a judge to roll over on its back and kick its feet in the air in anticipation is for some “agent” to whisper “furn influence” or terrorist in his or her ear.There’s no B.S. too implausible for them to swallow.

    Speaking of China, if you look around, there are videos of Chinese officials being perp walked for corruption. A lot of the time if you watch to the end, you’ll see them pan over huge stacks of currency, sometimes tons, mostly RMB, Euros and green backs. They don’t seem able to effectively launder their own graft. They aren’t putting it in banks.

  76. Via Instapundit:

    https://quillette.com/2022/02/17/a-student-sleuth-found-evidence-that-our-university-practices-reverse-racism-heres-why-i-advised-him-not-to-publish-it/

    Read that article. Think about the things the author describes, and ask yourself if this moral cripple is someone who should be making decisions for society as a whole? “Oh, I can’t advise my student to do the right thing, because reasons…”. This is why the academic community has become what it is: A cesspool of unaccountable BS-mongers who think they’re entitled to run the world, when they’ve got the actual moral strength and fiber of a bunch of rotting pussywillows.

    The products of that environment, who’re not actually either “superior” or educated, come out of those institutions with chips on their shoulders, no real intellectual attainments, and a sense of entitlement and justification. Is it any wonder they’re fscking up the world around us, when we put them in charge? Zero responsibility, zero accountability–Isn’t that the way the old aristocracies used to run things? Mostly into the ground? All that we’ve changed is the criteria by which we select these people–In the old days, it was all down to who you were descended from and who you knew in the current regime. Not too different these days, is it? Only difference is, now we’re making the unqualified black man our guy on top, vice putting the inbred aristo in charge of things.

    This all needs to stop. And, it will, of it’s own accord, as these assholes run the world into the ground. The way we’re doing things is not working. The proper way to do this stuff is to integrate it all, such that the engineer is brought up alongside the trades executing his vision, and the doctor is trained right alongside the nurses, pharmacists and everyone else–As a team, mutually respectful and cognizant of everyone’s contributions.

    The old model, where the “professionally trained and educated” were treated as little tin-pot gods who could do no wrong? That’s the real source of our problems–The idea that their supposed “intellectual attainments” and credentials entitled them to treat the world around them as though everyone else counted for nothing? The reality is, ain’t none of those assholes would be able to do a damn thing, if there weren’t someone there beside them, equally worthy of respect, handing them the instruments, mopping the floors, and doing the accounting.

  77. “They’re [college-educated] no better than anyone else, there’s no particular virtue to being able to sling numbers and words better than some guy with a wrench …”

    We are on the same side of the fence there. The questions is — How to put that right?

    Back when Elvis was a young man, National Service seemed to make a pretty positive impact. The college-bound got an understanding of what it takes to do things in the physical world, and both college-bound and work-bound learned the others were human beings. But we don’t do that anymore.

    Another factor which made a difference in the pre-1970s days was teenage jobs. College-bound teens pumped gas, worked in the drive-thrus, and mowed lawns along with their non-college-bound peers. It helped mutual understanding. But now the Political Class has imported illegal aliens for those kinds of physical jobs.

    You are right that universities have gone off the rails, and are now doing more harm than good. But how to reform those colleges? One way would be to give them a more mature & worldly student body — through something like teen jobs or National Service. What are other alternatives?

  78. OSINT twitter going crazy tonight, they’ve been going progressively more and more bonkers every night for the past week.
    Still makes no sense for Russia to invade, so I have no idea what’s going on at all.

  79. Like I said… There needs to be greater integration. Instead of training doctors at medical schools, nurses at nursing schools, and pharmacists in pharmacology schools, you need to shut that crap stovepiping down. You’re a team; train them as teams. The mentality where they’re each their own little bailiwick with their own stovepiped educational and professional associations? That kind of thinking is the problem, and needs to end. Things are too complex these days for just one guy to do it all–It’d be about like a stone-age hunter trying to be the sole guy on top of everything, when the reality is he was part of a team that produced the knapped flints, processed the kills, and all the other various tasks that went into doing things like dealing with the results of a successful mammoth hunt. I am pretty sure, from my study of those societies, that they were a lot like the iKung down in the Kalahari, where the successful hunter got talked down by everyone, to keep his ego in check.

    I think that we need to stop treating these things as though they are separate little fiefdoms; everything ought to be integrated, and the engineer/architect ought to be trained alongside the guys who will be executing their designs. Likewise, when you go to design a car? The poor freakin’ mechanic who has to do the repair work on that vehicle ought to be integrated into the training process, so that the engineer knows what the issues are with his design when it comes to repairing it…

    Stovepipes are bad for everything except directing smoke out of your house, ‘mmmkay?

  80. @Brian,

    I don’t doubt but that the OSINT types are going nuts–How can they figure out what is going on, when even the players who are acting on everything don’t know?

    We’re in truly unexplored territory, with this–BidenCo. is fronting for an essentially senile old man who was never all that bright, to begin with. And, the things they think they know? They really, truly do not.

    We’re governed by a literal kakistocracy. Get used to it–And, don’t make the mistake of thinking that the Republicans are gonna save us. The ones calling themselves Republicans, at the top of the national party? They’re in on it, or none of the crap we’ve dealt with over the last six years would have happened. Hell, even Obama wouldn’t have happened without their willing acquiescence, because McCain and Romney both basically threw the election to him, deliberately in my opinion.

  81. The OSINT folks at least show their work. Sort of. Links, videos, pics, etc. Of course, I’m pretty sure almost all of them are actually cutouts for various intel agencies, so one has to be very, very careful about what to believe.
    Weird as hell, what’s going on right now. Totally inexplicable. I still in my gut can’t believe it’s real, it makes zero sense, I honestly think there’s crazier stuff to come, because this is an idiotic move with no possible chance of success.

  82. I had not heard about the banks. That is very interesting.

    Most banks in the US run on about 10-20% reserves. That means that if someone puts $1000 cash in, the bank keeps $200 on hand and lends out the rest. (greatly simplified. Look up “fractional reserve banking” for more.)

    I don’t know what the regulatory requirement in the us is currently. It used to be under 10% with most banks dually holding close to 20.

    Point being, it is delicately balanced and even small but coordinated withdrawals cab cause a lot of problems. Not a huge problem for a single bank. They just borrow cash short term from another bank. The person withdrawing from 1st bank probably deposits it in 2nd bank which then lend it to 1st to cover withdrawals

    Huge problem if widespread. The federal reserve banks will lend cash to cover the run but they may not have enough on hand.

    If 10-20% of Americans pull their cash out and put it under the mattress, it could potentially crash the entire world monetary system.

    I suspect similar things apply in Canada, though I don’t know anything about canadian banking.

    I can see why it is not being reported on. It can quickly get out of hand as people having nothing to do with the protest just want to get their cash before the bank runs out.

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