Category: Protests

Canadian Freedom Convoy: Second Press Conference

The Organizers of the Canadian Trucker Freedom Convoy 2022 held a second press conference yesterday and kept tight control of the messaging. Statements were made by protest leaders and they took no questions. At the end, a lawyer answered questions only about the Freedom Convoy’s Go Fund Me account, which is currently suspended.

Lead organizer Tamara Lich made the following statement which was then translated into French:

“We are here out of love for our families, our communities, and our nation. These past two years, the Covid mandates have divided us. This protest began because of government’s restrictions on truckers’ freedoms. Our movement has grown in Canada and across the world, because common people are tired of the mandates and restrictions in their lives that now seem to be doing more harm than good. As of today, Sweden, Denmark, the UK, Norway, Finland, Ireland and Switzerland have removed all Covid mandates and restrictions. We are therefore calling on all levels of government in Canada to end all mandates and restrictions. We will continue our protest until we see a clear plan for their elimination. Premier Scott Moe of Saskatchewan has taken leadership in Canada by ending restrictions and mandates in that province. Hopefully, these words will turn into long lasting action. No one from the federal, provincial or municipal government has met directly with us. Instead they are using you, the Media, to portray us as racists, misogynists and even terrorists. As a woman of Metis heritage, a mother and a grandmother, I am offended.

The reality is that members of the movement are average, peace-loving, law-abiding citizens from all walks of life who are fed up with being disrespected and bullied by our government. We continue to see additional Canadians coming to Ottawa every day for peaceful demonstrations. We want to thank the thousands of residents of Ottawa who have stepped forward to show their support, providing accommodations, food and just plain friendship to members of our community. This love of community is what Canada is all about.

Let me assure the people of Ottawa that we have no intent to stay one day longer than necessary. Our departure will be based on the Prime Minister doing what is right: ending all mandates and restrictions on our freedoms. We also want to thank the thousands of people who have so generously donated to this protest on Go Fund Me. Over the past three days our accountants and lawyers have been working hard to deal with the legal details. This morning, our lawyer sent all the details that they have asked for. I am confident that Go Fund Me has all the information needed to immediately lift the suspension they put on our campaign. I am hoping to hear from Go Fund Me soon, so that we can get the money to the truckers and keep our protest for freedom moving forward. I will be providing regular updates. I want to thank all Canadians from the bottom of my heart for our quest to restore our freedom. Thank you.”

Then a former member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who resigned after 15 years in opposition to the mandates, stepped forward. His name is Daniel Bulford and he now seems to be working fulltime for the Freedom Convoy. As former law enforcement, he was able to assure that the heavy police presence, barricades and the like were standard practice for large scale events. The protesters are working with police to ensure access for emergency vehicles. Bulford also addressed the supposed “desecration” of a war memorial and a statue of Terry Fox. The protestors are providing 24 hour protection of these sites; at night volunteers sleep nearby in tents to make sure nobody vandalizes them. He also said that he has it on “very reliable information” that three people arrested recently were outside agitators. The truckers and supporters are feeding the homeless, have brought a trailer full of food to a homeless shelter and are cleaning the streets, shoveling snow and doing regular garbage collections.

These people have their act together, plenty of money, widespread support and show no sign of backing down. Time for Justin to face the music.

Canada Freedom Convoy: WE THE PEOPLE ARE THE NEWS

The Canadian Trucker Freedom Convoy began as a protest against vaccine mandates. It grew into a rejection of ALL Covid restrictions and mandates, as well as the incompetent Canadian political class and its lapdog, the Media.

Canada has some of the harshest Covid restrictions in the world. For example, in Quebec the unvaccinated can’t shop at Ikea, Wal-Mart or Costco unless they are going to the pharmacy. In that case, they are provided with an escort so they don’t try to buy anything in the store. Segregation and criminalization of the unvaccinated was celebrated recently on a Quebec talk show, where children said they’d call the police on the unvaccinated and that “we should cut everything from them little by little until they submit.” Oh, how the audience laughed with delighted approval at that!

The Organizers of the Trucker Freedom Convoy are hitting the breaks on the insanity and divisiveness in their country. They and at least 50,000 truckers and hundreds of thousands of Canadians on the streets are demanding that all mandates be dropped for all Canadians.

Here a Canadian two time Afghan War veteran with “boots on the ground” at the protest in Ottawa dispels the myth that the legacy of veterans is being dishonored, but rather the opposite. Also, a clip from a 2019 dinner is played wherein Justin Trudeau makes light of the fact that the Liberal Media was paid $600 million by government for “stellar headlines”:

The Organizers of the Convoy realize that legacy media lies (the news reported that their GoFundMe was frozen when it wasn’t) and there is a relentless effort to paint the protestors as white supremacist and hateful. This is why the Toronto Star and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation were banned from their first interview to the press on January 30.

The three organizers are Tamara Lich, a Metis woman from Alberta, Benjamin Dichter, a vaccinated Jewish trucker from Ontario and Chris Berber, a trucking company owner from Saskatchewan. Their GoFundMe is NOW frozen, after $10 million was donated.

There is much to unpack in this interview, but highlights include:

Their assertion that this movement is not partisan. They won’t “play the game that liberals are bad and conservatives are good; they are all horrible and should be ashamed of themselves.” They consider this a “cultural moment in Canadian history” and describe the participants as “having hope again, having pride again.” They say how wonderful it is to see people’s smiling faces and that they want to “re-establish unity.”

In particular, they say that Quebec leader Francois Legault is a “lunatic” guilty of “crimes against humanity” and that’s why “Quebecers are really unifying with the rest of Canada.”

They say the Sikh community has come out strong for the movement, although the media is trying to destroy this reality. Canadians who immigrated from Eastern European countries like Poland and Belarus are highly represented in the Convoy and “haven’t forgotten socialism. It is the direction (the country) is going that they are the most concerned about.” The Organizers say they are “struck by the diversity” of the people on the streets. “Everybody is there.”

I may do another blog post on this interview, but want to close with a quote from Tamara Lich, who recounted a conversation with a Clan mother and the importance of women to First Nations people, the “importance of women in all cultures.” She goes on: “Women are the life givers, and our men need to stand up for women and children and we’ve kind of lost that. If you listen to the government–what I’m hearing from the government–is they’re trying to pull that family unit apart, pull and divide and tear so many different aspects of Canadians apart. That’s not what a leader does. A leader brings people together. They don’t destroy people and tear them apart.”

Media Blackout on Canadian Trucker, Worldwide Protests

50,000 Canadian truckers, and millions of people around the world, are protesting against vaccine mandates and passports.

It is truly incredible that the Canadian Trucker Freedom Convoy is shattering WORLD RECORDS and this is getting next to no attention from “the news.”

The Convoy left from Vancouver on Sunday in response to the federal government’s vaccine mandates for cross-border truckers. This protest of historic proportions will culminate in Ottawa on Sunday. Check out this video–the number of trucks and people cheering them on are MASSIVE.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attempted to dismiss Canadians who “want their lives back” and oppose mandates. He called them a “small fringe minority” expressing “unacceptable views” and thinks that being forced to accept injections in exchange for the right to work and have a normal life is the best way to have freedom.

This guy is really out of touch. He says that the “good” Canadians follow “the science”, which I guess means believing the lie that the unvaccinated exist in a state of permanent contagiousness. And the vaccinated are always free of disease and never contagious.

So now Justin Trudeau, who is vaccinated, boosted, symptomless and tested negative for the virus, is quarantining because he was “exposed” recently. Doesn’t sound like he thinks the vaccines work if he now needs to hide his vaccinated self away from people in order to “keep them safe.” From what? Your tyrannical madness? Obviously he is hiding from his own citizens who are pushing back against his “orders” in large numbers. This movement is hardly “fringe.” It is reported that there are millions of people along the truckers’ route, cheering them on.

Last weekend was also another Worldwide Rally for Freedom. Hundreds of thousands of people in dozens of countries protested vaccine mandate and vaccine passports.

In Sweden, large crowds gathered:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaJi8onvmlw

The United States saw its first national protest, Defeat the Mandates, in Washington DC, joining hundreds of thousands of protesters around the country:

I am proud to say that I was there. Reject Vaccine Mandates and Vaccine Passports!

NYS Teachers Pension Fund Tied to Vaccine Manufacturers

Rachel Maniscalco is a NYC teacher who was fired last year for refusing to take a vaccine that had been on the market for about seven months in order to keep her job.

I first saw her at the August 25, 2021 Teachers for Choice Rally in NYC. There was actually a smidge of mainstream news coverage on this Rally. Here is a clip from AP News:

In this clip, Rachel announces her exit from her union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). They support mandatory vaccination for teachers and students. Then, she sums up what’s going on accurately:

“So your question was, am I prepared to lose it all? And the answer is YES. Because I believe this is not just about a vaccine. I do not believe this is just about our health. This is about medical freedom. This is about totalitarianism. We are headed into a very dangerous area. And if we comply with this, we are setting a terrible precedent for our future.”

In addition to being a means for government officials to exert greater control over the public via vaccine passports (aka The Key to NYC) and vaccine mandates, these vaccines are also about money. Lots and lots of money.

Rachel shared this article on her instagram account (@donotcomplynyc) today. It is dated June 10, 2019.

In 2019, NYS got rid of the the religious exemption provision for students regarding vaccination. A NYS parent cannot opt out of vaccinating their child and still send their child to public school.

The article clearly infers that NYS Assemblyman Jeffry Dinowitz and NYS Senators Brad Hoylman and David Carlucci were lobbied by NYS United Teachers Union and the UFT. In a report from Crain’s NY Business (April 11, 2019), the UFT and its NYS chapter spent a combined $2,602,761 on lobbying (United Teachers NYS alone spent $1,299,082).

So why would the UFT lobby NYS politicians so hard to get rid of vaccine exemptions? Well, because that’s good for vaccine manufacturers. And what’s good for vaccine manufacturers is what’s good for the the UFT. According to the 2019 NYS Teachers Retirement System Domestic Equity Holdings report, the NYS Teacher’s Retirement Fund is “heavily invested in three of the top five vaccine manufacturers.”

And who are those manufacturers? In addition to GlaxoSmithKline with a paltry 57,300 shares (value: $2,394, 567), the Retirement Fund is also has well over 9 million shares in Pfizer (value: $390,770,377) and well over 4 million shares in Merck (value: $350,663, 184).

Please, can we stop with the notion that this vaccine push is about our health? The vaccine doesn’t stop the spread of the virus. The government promised the vaccines would do this and they didn’t! Why aren’t more people upset that this product didn’t deliver on this promise? Oh I know…because now the spin is that the vaccines (and boosters now) “keep you out of the hospital” and without them you’re a goner. This kind of shift in the narrative is called “damage control” in the advertising world.

These vaccines are a golden goose for many, in several ways. They have made billionaires out of vaccine company CEOs, enriched the UFT’s Retirement Fund and politicians are power-tripping with the endless mandates they are able to issue due to this endless “emergency.”

Newsflash: Trump is Pro-Vaccine, Boosted

Remember Operation Warp Speed?

In the Fall of 2020, I lived and worked one of the most liberal areas in NYC. When the election was called for Biden in November, the whole neighborhood erupted in cheers and people congregated in the park to dance and celebrate his defeat.

During that Fall, some people I knew confided in me that they distrusted Trump’s Operation Warp Speed and vowed not to take “his” vaccine once it became available. Then he got switched out for Biden, Biden said take it and presto! These same people couldn’t wait to get jabbed.

Corporate media likes to plants the seeds for illogical thinking in the minds of the American public, and then lovingly waters these deranged sprouts with steady streams of lies and misrepresentations.

One of the more baffling examples of this phenomenon is the widespread belief (especially among liberals) that those who decline the vaccine, and/or oppose using vaccination status to deny people basic rights, must somehow be Trump supporters.

As I wrote elsewhere on this site (“Lose the Battle, Win the War”), people who have taken to the streets to defend their bodily autonomy and oppose medical apartheid are a racially, culturally and politically diverse group. This group includes vaccinated people. Turns out there are freedom-lovers from every walk of life!

There are people in NYC who are conducting “sit-ins” at restaurants. They refuse to show vaccine cards or passes. Here’s a recent exchange at the Union Cafe Restaurant in NYC:

In this clip, a customer who confronted these anti-mandate activists asks, “Who are you guys, shadow Trump supporters?” (This was the first time I heard the term, “shadow Trump supporter” and I don’t know what it means.)

The woman says, “You took Trump’s vaccine, so it has nothing to do with Trump. Are you a Trump supporter?”

At this, the guy really has no where to go with his argument, so he turns to leave. But before he does, he admonishes, “Find a better use of your time!”

Buddy, I can’t think of a better use of time than to reject and slap down this vaccine mandate and passport crap.

Will he change his tune when he tries to use his digital vaccine passport to go somewhere and it says “No Covid Records Found”? Because that’s what happened to this woman who was flying from England to America, even though she had followed all the covid rules.

These passports are so dangerous but this person doesn’t have a clue. He’s still stuck on the Trump record the media keeps spinning in his head.

If we fully embrace this vaccine passport system that cities such as NYC seem to be doing, we will have NO CONTROL over our ability to move about freely. If the technology fails or the government changes its mind about what it means to be in compliance or what’s “safe”, then what? As it says in the linked article above, there is no obvious appeal process for when things go wrong and there’s a technological “glitch.” And may I remind people that we continue to live under a perpetual state of emergency which allows for government to issue endless mandates without any input from we the people?

Many seem willing to trade their freedom for this system of government-controlled technology which is in place for “our safety.” How is it keeping us safe? The vaccines don’t eradicate the virus, which is doing what RNA respiratory viruses naturally do: mutate, become less lethal and continue to exist. There is absolutely no evidence that passports have any impact on anything other than increasing the uptake of vaccines (otherwise known as medical coercion).

Mandated vaccines are a vicious circle to nowhere except a dystopian reality. In NYC and now elsewhere in America, a vaccine passport “system” dictates who gets to have a job and enter public spaces and who doesn’t. Those who control the system require complete and unquestioning cooperation (otherwise known as obedience) to their vaccine passport system, otherwise life stops working.

The definition of totalitarianism is “a system of government that is centralized, dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state.”

But you keep fixating on Trump, buddy and go right along with the program.

That’s exactly what the government and the media wants.