Bank freezes Freedom Convoy donations
RT | February 12, 2022
The Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) has announced that it will not be handing over $1.4 million in donations to the Freedom Convoy, and is planning to surrender the money to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice instead.
Speaking to Canada’s CTV News on Friday, a representative for the top 10 North American financial institution revealed that “TD has asked the court to accept the funds, which were raised through crowdfunding and deposited into personal accounts at TD.” Approximately $1 million is the money raised for the Canadian truckers and not refunded by GoFundMe, and the other $0.4 million is made up of direct donations. The bank said it was applying to entrust the funds with the authorities in the hope that “they may be managed and distributed in accordance with the intentions of the donors, and/or to be returned to the donors who have requested refunds but whose entitlement to a refund cannot be determined by TD.”
Freedom Convoy lawyer Keith Wilson is vowing to put up a legal fight to “have the restrictions on the donated funds lifted as soon as possible.”
This is not the first time the Freedom Convoy has had its donations frozen, with GoFundMe announcing earlier this month that it would not hand over $9 million out of the $10 million raised for the movement. As justification for the move, the crowdfunding platform cited Canadian police reports of “violence and other unlawful activity” by the protesters. GoFundMe was initially planning to send the money to charities instead, but then decided to refund the donations.
The truckers switched to Christian fundraising platform GiveSendGo shortly afterwards. However, the Ontario Superior Court announced on Thursday that it would be freezing funds coming from GiveSendGo accounts. The court sided with Ontario’s attorney general, who claimed the money would be used to further a criminal act.
GiveSendGo responded by saying the Canadian court’s order does not apply to it, with money still being raised for the protesters.
With donations to the movement being seized on multiple occasions, the truckers are now turning to cryptocurrencies. According to a video posted by the truckers on Facebook, by Friday, they had already raised $913,000 in Bitcoin. The Ottawa police are apparently aware of the new fundraising strategy, mentioning it in documents filed in an Ontario court. The Canadian authorities are, however, yet to outline any steps to counter the move.
Freedom Convoy activists have been protesting in downtown Ottawa since January 29, as well as blocking a number of border crossings to the US. Their main complaint regards Covid vaccine mandates for truckers who cross the border – though their demands have expanded to include calls to ditch all Covid restrictions and for Justin Trudeau’s government to resign.
On Friday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford declared a state of emergency in the province, urging the protesters to “end these occupations and go home.”
Lawmakers take heat for flip-flopping on mask mandates
RT | February 10, 2022
Republican lawmakers have slammed their Democratic opponents for suddenly speaking in favor of lifting mask mandates, especially in schools, saying that the switch is just an attempt to boost their chances in the midterm elections.
Democrat-led New Jersey, New York, California, Oregon, Connecticut, and Delaware announced plans to roll back their mask requirements on Tuesday and Wednesday, with Illinois soon expected to join them.
The issue has been a major bone of contention between the two rival American parties during the pandemic. The Democrats have always defended face coverings as an essential measure to stop the spread of Covid-19, while the Republicans insist that the measure is of little use, especially for students, who face a much lesser risk of serious coronavirus infection due to their young age.
“I’d love to see whatever internal polling went around the Democrat Party last week – it’s certainly no coincidence that Democrat-run states are dropping mandates as fast as they can,” Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., told the Daily Mail about the plans by Democratic governors to lift their mask requirements.
Hern was fully backed by Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., who claimed that “the Democrats continually follow the political science instead of the actual science.”
“We’ve known for months that masking has been detrimental to our children. The science hasn’t changed in the last several months, the only change has been the overwhelming uproar over government mandates,” she said.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz, said it was “no surprise” that the Democrats have now decided to give up on mask mandates. “They had every intention of using Covid mandates to their advantage – especially when it comes to the polls – and have perfected playing politics in our everyday lives.”
However, Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., suggested that the switch will likely be too little, too late. “Democrats forced masks on kids for two years and now they’re hoping that the rest of America will suddenly forget.”
The midterm elections, scheduled to take place in the US in November, are expected to be a tough test for the Democratic Party. Last month, a poll by Gallup revealed that 47% of Americans identified themselves as Republicans, compared to 42% as Democrats. The news figures contradicted the historic trend of Democrats outnumbering GOP supporters in the country.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said earlier this week that the number of cases and hospitalization in the US was still “too high” to think about lifting Covid-19 restrictions, adding that it continued to endorse universal masking in schools.
On Tuesday, CNN’s medical analyst, Dr. Leana Wen, who has always been a strong supporter of mask mandates, urged the CDC to follow the example of the Democratic states and lift the curbs.
“The CDC has already lost a lot of trust and credibility. This is their time to rebuild and remove restrictions as quickly as they were put in,” she argued.
Wen defended her new stance on face coverings by claiming that “circumstances have changed. Case counts are declining. Also, the science has changed.”
She faced a harsh backlash online, with prominent journalist Glenn Greenwald, who was among the critics, insisting that behavior like Wen’s was the reason behind the public loss of trust in what the medical experts have to say.
“As others noted, there is nothing in The Science™ that changed to justify Dem politicians suddenly ending mask mandates. All that changed is the political fear they have. Conflating ‘The Science’ with politics like this is a key reason many lost trust in public health experts.”
The UK wants to criminalize “misinformation” online as its own health service gets caught posting falsehoods
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | February 11, 2022
Less than a week after the UK proposed criminalizing the posting of some types of “knowingly false” information online, England’s National Health Service has taken down a social media video over inaccurate information.
Last week, NHS England posted a video on its Twitter account with more than half-a-million followers to promote vaccination in kids.
The video claimed that 1% of children will be hospitalized because of Covid, 136 kids in the UK had died because of Covid, and 117,000 children have “long Covid.”
The video went viral attracting comments and retweets from some of the most popular influencers in the health category.
But some, including Dr. Robert Hughes, a clinical research fellow at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, questioned the accuracy of the data.
“As both a parent and scientist who has been involved in research on symptom duration and severity of covid in children, the cited statistics didn’t make sense to me,” Hughes wrote in an article in UnHerd. “The idea that 1% of children with Covid are hospitalized for it didn’t pass the ‘sniff test.’”
The video also shared the story of a kid aged 11 that was suffering from long Covid. According to Hughes, the story contradicted the vaccination guidance in the UK, as it does not even recommend vaccination for that age group.
Additionally, there is not yet any substantial evidence to support that the vaccine prevents long Covid.
Hughes also notes that NHS England was silent when he and others questioned the accuracy of the data.
“Several people agreed with me, sharing their working for why these numbers are at best long outdated, may be orders of magnitude out, and risk undermining confidence in vaccine communications and uptake.
“But others seemed to dig in, praising both the content and tone of the messaging when challenged, and directing the discussion into an important, but different, one about the merits of extending Covid vaccination to children rather than the need for accurate and honest communication about vaccination,” Dr. Hughes wrote for UnHerd.
Hughes contacted the Office of the Statistics Regulator about the numbers. The Statistics Regulator agreed that it was important that the NHS provides accurate figures.
“It is important that figures provided by NHSE&I are accurate and reliable,” the Office of the Statistics Regulator said. “In this case the claim made in the video fell short of these expectations – we contacted NHSE&I and it acknowledged that the data were historic and had methodological shortcomings. We are therefore glad that the content has now been removed from Twitter.”
Before its removal, the video had already been widely shared.
Freedom Convoy – Address To Canadians by Tom Marazzo
February 10, 2022
End the mandates now. We will not be tricked into a violent outcome. We are peaceful protestors. Justice Hugh McLean acknowledges that we have a right to be here, to be heard and to protest, that is what we are here for. We are prepared to be arrested. We have our lawyers. We have no fear. We are here for our children.
Officials Weigh Steps to ‘Protect Children,’ as Ottawa Police Cut Off Critical Supplies to Freedom Convoy
By Judith Robinson | The Defender | February 9, 2022
As protests against Canada’s COVID vaccine mandates entered their 12th day, Ottawa police continued to cut off food and fuel supplies for hundreds of truckers.
Police Tuesday told reporters they are “having discussions with the Children’s Aid Society about what steps to take” to protect children living in what they estimated to be about 100 of the 400 trucks parked in the city.
The Freedom Convoy left Canada’s westernmost province, British Columbia, on Jan. 23 and arrived Jan. 29 in Ottawa.
It has inspired protests around the world, including in 27 European countries which are planning their own convoys.
Here’s the latest news on the Freedom Convoy:
- Police said discussions are underway with the Children’s Aid Society for the possible removal of the children from their protesting parents. Ottawa’s Deputy Police Chief Steve Bell cited noise, carbon monoxide fumes, lack of sanitation and noise levels as possible safety hazards. “We’re not at the stage of looking to do any sort of enforcement activity around that,” Bell told CTV News. “We’ll rely on the Children’s Aid Society to give us guidance.”
- In a news release, groups of retired and active-duty police officers from across Canada, along with members of parliament and other advocacy groups, expressed support for the truckers: “The government’s decision to block refueling of the trucks puts fellow Canadians and their families including their young children in danger due to the extreme cold temperatures currently occurring in Ottawa. Regardless of where one stands on this topic, these actions are inhumane and do not align with Canadian principles,” the release stated.
- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s bodyguard resigned stating that he could not abide by the government’s dictates which he felt contravened the human rights enshrined in the Canadian Constitution.
- Nick Motichka, a 10-year veteran of the Calgary Police Service, delivered a strong message on Facebook to his fellow regulation enforcement officers: “Police are here to help and protect people” not “to do the politicians’ dirty work… What is happening in Ottawa, with the clear political influence on the police, to physically exert political will on peaceful protesters for nothing more than possible political gain is so very wrong, on so many levels.”
- Alberta Premier Jason Kenny dropped his province’s vaccine passport program at midnight, promising to lift other public health restrictions by March 1, depending on the number of hospital admissions.
- Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe announced Tuesday he will end his province’s vaccine passport policy by Monday, Feb. 14. Other public health policies, such as masking, will remain in effect until the end of the month.
- Provincial Parliament Member Randy Hillier is organizing another “Blue-collar Convoy” of tractors to join the truckers in Ottawa this weekend, as he did last week. The proposed routes are listed on the Facebook page.
- Freedom Convoy truckers and Canadian doctors sent a message that vaccine mandates must be removed and they pleaded for a meeting with Trudeau.
Beyond Canada’s borders:
- The current blockade by truckers of the bridge from Windsor, Ontario to Detroit is preventing much of the daily “$300 million in car and truck parts, agricultural products, steel and other raw materials” to reach its destinations, according to the Financial Post. “Almost 20% of all Canada-U.S. trade moves across the Ambassador Bridge, and 30% of cross-border freight moved by truck uses that route.”
- According to Politico, convoys are now being organized across the U.S. and “regional protests have been planned in states from Alabama to Wyoming, based on Politico’s review of social media activity.”
- “Anti-mandate protesters in France, inspired by the ‘Freedom Convoy’ in Canada, plan to make their way to Paris, then Brussels, to demand an end to vaccine passports,” according to the Financial Post. “Around 200 protesters gathered in a parking lot in Nice today, waving Canadian flags in solidarity with protesters in Canada. Their convoy is made up of motorcycles and cars, but no trucks.”
Similar protests erupted in the last few days in Australia and New Zealand, the Washington Post reported. The “Convoy to Canberra” involves only a couple of 18-wheelers as few Australian truckers own their own vehicles. Protestors brought camping gear — setting up an occupation which has been compared to “Occupation Wall Street.” According to CNN, a convoy of trucks and camper vans has blocked the streets near New Zealand’s Parliament in Wellington.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
Ontario Attorney General freezes GiveSendGo donation distribution to Freedom Convoy
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | February 10, 2022
The Ontario government is further being accused of suppressing civil liberties and the right to organize a protest after it has announced that it has successfully petitioned a court to freeze access to the millions of dollars donated to the Freedom Convoy through free speech fundraising platform GiveSendGo.
GiveSendGo is the alternative US-based fundraising platform that came to the rescue after GoFundMe pulled the plug on donations to the Freedom Convoy protesters who are campaigning for civil liberties in Ottawa and at multiple border crossings.

A spokesperson for Premier Doug Ford says Ontario’s Attorney General submitted the application to the Superior Court of Justice, requesting that it be illegal to distribute donations made through GiveSendGo’s two crowdfunding campaigns, the “Freedom Convoy 2022” and “Adopt-a-Trucker.”
The full statement is as follows:
“Today, the Attorney General brought an application in the Superior Court of Justice for an order pursuant to section 490.8 of the Criminal Code prohibiting any person from disposing of, or otherwise dealing with, in any manner whatsoever, any and all monetary donations made through the Freedom Convoy 2022 and Adopt-a-Trucker campaign pages on the GiveSendGo online fundraising platform.
“This afternoon, the order was issued. It binds any and all parties with possession or control over these donations.”
Ford’s office said that an order binding “any and all parties with possession or control over these donations” has been granted and issued.
GiveSendGo is now being described as an “offense-related property” as described in 490.8 of the Criminal Code.
Civil liberties protestors have faced an uphill battle, with the Canadian government trying to suppress the protest in several ways.
More than $10 million was originally raised through GoFundMe, a platform that has been accused of bias and selectively enforcing its policies.
Donors have raised over $8.4 million on GiveSendGo at the time of writing.
In a statement, GiveSendGo was not deterred by the order and said, “Know this! Canada has absolutely zero jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here at GiveSendGo. All funds for every campaign on GiveSendGo flow directly to the recipients of those campaigns, not least of which is The Freedom Convoy campaign.”
How Big Pharma sold vaccines to the world – Part 3
By Paula Jardine | TCW Defending Freedom | February 10, 2022
THE World Health Organisation’s Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP) was developed to help GAVI (the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) achieve its ‘decade of vaccines’ from 2010, helping ‘all individuals and communities enjoy lives free from vaccine-preventable diseases’.
All countries were to make immunisation a strategic priority, requiring more surveillance to ‘strengthen national capacity to formulate evidence-based policies’. There was no aversion to financially incentivising either individuals or healthcare workers to encourage vaccination, despite the potential for conflict of interest.
The primary success metric in the GVAP was that by 2020 there should be at least 90 per cent national vaccination coverage ‘with at least 80 per cent vaccination coverage in every administrative unit for all vaccines in the national immunisation programme’ for the target populations.
Immunisation Information Systems (IIS), national registries to record the who, what and when of vaccination, were established.
The European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) led a scoping exercise for this in 2016. Systems which would be interoperable with other databases were to be formulated with ‘a heavy design emphasis on generating evidence to support decisions that need to be made at the population level’.
Vaccination coverage is mentioned 81 times in the ECDC report, twice as many times as vaccine safety. The ECDC claims that ‘IIS can help mitigate potential rumours and unfounded concerns through the provision of evidence, including on adverse events following immunisation’.
That may be so, but the only safety signal likely to emerge from an IIS is evidence of secondary vaccine failure – that is, breakthrough disease outbreaks amongst those inoculated against a given disease, requiring a booster vaccination campaign.
The IIS do not exist for safety monitoring (the technical term for which is pharmacovigilance) of the vaccines once they are deployed on the population at large. Pharmacovigilance is the remit of the regulators who license them, not of the public health authorities who monitor vaccination coverage.
In fact, only seven European countries record adverse events to vaccines in their IIS. The UK is not amongst them. Of the seven that do, only Sweden automatically reports them to the regulator who has the power to withdraw unsafe products from use.
Dr David Sencer is the former director of the US government agency the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who lost his job after America’s ill-fated 1976 swine flu vaccination campaign.
He has pointed out that some adverse effects from vaccines become apparent only once the clinical trials conclude and after the vaccine is administered to very large numbers of people.
Sencer’s swine flu program had an active surveillance system for adverse events which he later called a trojan horse as the scale of death and injury led to the vaccination campaign being terminated after three months. Having indemnified the manufacturers because their insurers balked at covering them, the US government paid $135m for swine flu vaccines and an additional $90m in compensation for death or injury – almost as much in compensation over the swine flu vaccine programme as it did rolling it out.
The size of the US government’s 1976 compensation bill perhaps explains why no pharmaceutical regulator in the world has a system that actively monitors for post authorisation adverse events. Instead all regulators rely on passive surveillance through voluntary reports to systems like the Yellow Card system operated by the Medicines and Health Care Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) in the UK.
A vaccine is deemed safe if it passes Phase 1 clinical trials without any ‘unscheduled’ animal deaths or untimely deaths of human subjects and effective if it passes Phase 2 clinical trials.
Products such as the ill-fated Pandemrix flu vaccine – hit by adverse effects in 2009 – may on occasion be withdrawn after licensing. But as a rule, regulators make no active effort to protect consumers at large that might necessitate a product being withdrawn once it is in use.
To facilitate GAVI’s efforts to monitor vaccination coverage rates reliably, the GVAP asks for each individual to be assigned a unique identification number so that the respective health authority can ensure everyone gets every vaccine in ‘time-monitored’ adherence with the vaccine schedules.
In 2013, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) funded a fingerprint identification system to track vaccinated children in Africa. GAVI, the Rockefeller Foundation and Microsoft subsequently formed the ID2020 alliance in 2016 to promote the global need for secure digital identity.
‘We are currently in the middle of a global identity crisis: Tens of millions of children – especially those living in most remote, impoverished communities – have no formal record of their existence,’ said Dr Seth Berkley, associate director of health sciences at the Rockefeller Foundation, and one of the instigators of GAVI.
‘That represents an enormous impediment to GAVI’s mission of ensuring that every child worldwide receives the essential vaccines they need to survive and thrive.’
He said the pacesetters of GAVI’s initiative called INFUSE (Uptake, Scale and Equity in Immunisation) ‘are on the cutting edge of technologies that might help us overcome that challenge’.
Covid-19 has presented another opportunity to fulfil GAVI’s vaccination monitoring mission. Dr Rebecca Weintraub, a board member of Simprints, one of the companies working with it to develop biometric identification solutions for immunisation registries, said: ‘We have a narrow opportunity to set the stage for such fair and sustainable infrastructure across the globe. If done well, we can ensure the promise of the Covid-19 vaccine portfolio leads to future widespread vaccination – and protection – for global populations.’ https://gatesopenresearch.org/articles/4-182/v2
However, biometric identification for developing immunisation registries is beginning to morph into something else. The Ada Lovelace Institute, which was set up by partners including the Wellcome Trust in 2018 to ‘ensure that data and AI work for people and society’, calls vaccine passports and Covid status apps ‘systems for verifiably sharing private health data relevant to Covid-19 which could be used to stream society and impose differential lockdown restrictions.
‘This might mean limiting individual access to work, insurance, hospitality and leisure, and other parts of life, based on an individual’s health or risk of Covid-19 infection or transmission.’ In other words, universal vaccination means universal control.
Covid-19 may have brought these passports to public attention, but the idea is not new. In December 2017, the European Commission published a Roadmap on Vaccination.
The first action on the roadmap is to ‘examine the feasibility of developing a common vaccination card/passport for EU citizens (that takes into account potentially different national vaccination schedules and) that is compatible with electronic immunisation information systems and recognised for use across borders, without duplicating work at national level.’
In 2018, the European Health Parliament, a lobby organisation that develops health policy recommendations to ‘rethink European health care’ and whose sponsors include Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer, recommended that electronic vaccination passports be established in order to ‘ensure people know and act in their best interests on vaccination’.
The very day the MHRA authorised the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the WHO put out a call for experts to develop a so-called Smart Vaccine Certificate programme.
Pharmaceutical revenue growth has been stimulated not only by measures to increase inoculation coverage, but by raising the number of vaccines put on national immunisation schedules.
The ‘child survival revolution’ promoted by the United Nations agency UNICEF began in 1982 with six vaccines. At the time of the first GAVI board meeting in 1999, there were 11 routinely recommended vaccines on the US national immunisation schedule.
GAVI immediately identified a vaccine gap that the developing world needed to close, and its ambition is for immunisation schedules around the world to mirror that of the US.
The goalposts keep moving. When it was updated again in 2013, the US immunisation schedule comprised a total of 52 injections of 17 different vaccines over the course of a person’s lifetime.
Gone are the days when the promise made to parents was that with a single injection their children could avoid infections and be protected for life. The number of boosters continues to increase and now includes a recommendation for adults to have an additional measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.
A footnote to the MMR recommendation says: ‘Documentation of (healthcare) provider-diagnosed disease is not considered acceptable evidence of immunity for measles, mumps or rubella.’
The very idea that someone might have acquired lifelong immunity after recovering from an infectious disease is now anathema, unless proven by a laboratory test.
The current UK immunisation schedule is marginally more conservative, both in terms of the total number of vaccines recommended and the number of doses. The most recently updated version, as of November 23, 2021, appeared on the website of the Oxford Vaccine Knowledge Project.
It recommends only three vaccines for adults – flu, pneumococcal and shingles. The three are recommended by Public Health England only for over-65s, or 70 in the case of the shingles vaccine. Despite the controversial mandate for NHS staff to have the Covid-19 vaccine – now withdrawn – the jab is not listed on the schedule.
The Oxford Vaccine Knowledge Project’s medical information is reviewed by Professor Andrew Pollard, chair of the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, and a member of the WHO’s Scientific Advisory Group of Experts Committee.
EU capital bans ‘Freedom Convoy’ protest
Police will keep the Canada-inspired trucker demonstration out of the Belgian capital, its mayor says
RT | February 10, 2022
Brussels Mayor Philippe Close announced on Thursday that a protest convoy of truckers will be barred from entering the city. Inspired by an ongoing demonstration against vaccine mandates in Canada, the truckers are set to reach the Belgian capital early next week.
“We have taken the decision to ban the ‘Freedom Convoy’ which has not been authorized to demonstrate because no request has been sent,” Close wrote on Twitter, noting that he made the decision along with Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden and Brussels region Minister President Rudi Vervoort.
Local and federal police “will divert motorized vehicles coming towards the capital despite the ban,” Close added.
Drawing participants from across the continent, the protest is inspired by a similar demonstration in the Canadian capital of Ottawa. Traffic in parts of Ottawa has been brought to a standstill for nearly two weeks by truckers demanding the immediate lifting of Covid restrictions, including a mandate that requires them to be vaccinated to re-enter the country from the US.
As host to key EU institutions, Brussels is a natural focal point for the European protest. While individual nations in the bloc have begun rolling back their vaccine pass systems at home, vaccination or proof of a negative Covid test is required to cross national borders within the union, and the EU recently proposed extending this system until 2023.
Truckers en route to Brussels have planned some stops along the way, with a major protest set to hit Paris this weekend. Authorities in the French capital issued a similar ban on Thursday, and threatened protesters with stiff fines should they block traffic in the city. Paris police said that a “specific device” would be used by the authorities to prevent the convoy from entering the city.
Why the Freedom Convoy is provoking unprecedented hysteria
By Rachel Marsden | RT | February 10, 2022
In the two weeks since the Freedom Convoy of Canadian truckers and their supporters began rallying in Ottawa to demand an end to all pandemic-related mandates and restrictions nationwide, it has become clear that this movement isn’t like other protest movements. And that’s a scary proposition for those in charge who thought that they’d manage and exploit this crisis on their own sweet time and schedule regardless of the actual science and reality on the ground.
There has long been an agenda to corral as many humans as possible unwittingly into a global dragnet through technological adoption. That’s what the revelations of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden were about back in 2013. A technological panopticon provides those in charge with the ability to monitor and ultimately control or sanction dissidents or outliers as the state pursues the self-serving agenda of a select few. Algorithms that exploit this massive online presence enable the state to accurately craft propaganda to be deployed to vilify them in the eyes of the general population, while portraying the state as the great protector — all while selling citizens out to the interests of a select few elites. Essentially, people are manipulated into arguing against their own good.
For those citizens who aren’t seduced by the mere convenience of technology or the narcissistic allure of social media, the fear of terrorism or of Covid-19 more actively encouraged onboarding to these dragnets. And that was before it was flat-out mandated with government-issued QR code health and vaccine passes that linked directly to your identity.
But then a bunch of truckers noticed that the threat of authoritarianism in Canada and elsewhere was closer than it may appear in their mirrors. And these essential workers decided to park their essential tools until officials stopped treating essential freedoms like they were negotiable.
Because Canadian mainstream media is so severely lacking in truly contradictory debate and diversity of thought, the protests risked sparking an unprecedented new awareness for those who had been force-fed government talking points while they may have already been starting to wonder why their entourage was triple-jabbed and still catching the virus. They were probably beginning to question the real value of the sacrifices that they were forced by government into making over the past two years under the illusion of safety.
Into this mix comes a group of people who aren’t paid activists or troublemakers, but rather everyday people with real jobs — and ‘essential’ ones at that, as previously hailed by the governments themselves. This makes the truckers a different breed of dissenters from Black Lives Matters, Antifa, or French Yellow Vest protesters. And that explains why the rhetorical big guns are now being deployed against them. The truckers, by demanding that life go back to exactly the way it was before governments started instrumentalizing the pandemic, could undermine any agenda to exploit the crisis for globalist advancement. This would especially be the case if the Freedom Convoy movement spread around the world, as it’s beginning to do. Here in France, for example, convoys departing from various cities are reportedly scheduled to arrive in Paris beginning on February 11.
Former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, a dual citizen of Ottawa and Globalistan, wrote in a recent Globe and Mail newspaper opinion piece: “[B)y now anyone sending money to the convoy should be in no doubt: You are funding sedition. Foreign funders of an insurrection interfered in our domestic affairs from the start. Canadian authorities should take every step within the law to identify and thoroughly punish them. The involvement of foreign governments and any officials connected to them should be identified, exposed and addressed.”
Unlike previous environmental protests that have raged in Canada to the detriment of the country’s future energy independence, and been backed by US-based think-tanks funded by American business interests close to Washington elites — all of which have apparently escaped Carney’s attention or interest — truckers don’t actually require ‘foreign funding’. They have actual jobs that pay quite well.
You’d think he’d know that, given his illustrious background as an expert in money. But good luck trying to exploit the ‘foreign bogeyman’ trope and attempting to find the scapegoat that you’re looking for. Carney is concerned about the ‘occupation’ by protesters, who are merely fighting against the government blockade of citizens’ lives for the past two years. And a bonus L-O-L for his effort to portray protests to regain basic freedoms as some kind of attempt to overthrow the government of Canada. Perhaps someone could provide him with a paper bag before he passes out?
Here’s your ground truth in Ottawa: “More than 100 Highway Traffic Act and other ‘Provincial Offence Notices’ were issued for offenses including excessive honking, driving the wrong way, defective muffler, no seat belt, alcohol readily available and having the improper class of driving license,” according to a Fox News report.
Well, you know what they say. Every hardcore coup d’état starts with a seat belt offense, right?
Meanwhile, US Homeland Security, already apparently attempting to ward off any potential future pushback against its own unpopular agenda, issued an advisory on February 7 conflating terrorism with “the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.” Would that include dissent against any government-approved narrative around the pandemic and related liberticidal measures?
Restrictions, mandates, and ‘vaccine passports’ in two Canadian provinces — Alberta and Saskatchewan — are now ending, premiers of both jurisdictions announced on February 7.
The rest of the world now runs the risk of these trucker movements gaining momentum, before the restrictions and mandates can allow for the full implementation of a lasting solution of tracking and surveillance capable of monitoring populist blowback to government insanity.
The rally race between truckers and globalists is on! And with nothing less than democracy and freedom at stake.
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of an independently produced French-language program that airs on Sputnik France.
