Only thing is, the deputy prime minister is even worse!
She is terrible, outright fash, but pour encourager les autres
Everyone expected it to kick off in Ottawa last night (Thursday/Friday morning). However, Mother Nature took a hand with heavy snowfall overnight, making it difficult for the authorities to arrest protestors and tow away vehicles. Things might now kick off this evening. If interested here’s one of many livestreams from Ottawa. Ottawa is 6 hours behind French time (CET), 5 hours behind UK time…
Watching all this has brought back many memories for me, from when I was living in Calgary in 1987 and 1988. Ok, I know it was more than 20 years ago now, but it was during the Calgary Winter Olympics, and Eddie the Eagle was the most famous Englishman in Calgary. At times during that winter it hit 47 below freezing. The snot would freeze in your nose. The strongest reminiscence I get from the present live streams from Ottawa is the crunching sound your boots made as you walked through the snow.
If you’re unfamiliar with all this (why should anyone be familiar with the weather in Canada?) I should add that no one goes out to protest in these temperatures for a laugh. That said, Ottawa will normally hit 10 or 20 below, which it is at the moment, because it has a semi maritime climate. When you go out on the prairies - Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta Provinces - you’re in a continental climate and freezing temperatures are much more fierce.
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Alas this Board does not regularly hold haiku competitions but that would be a theme I’d relish
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As usual it’s late and all that. I’ll give it a go:
A snot frozen nose
Eddie the E, I suppose
Both chilled to the bones
At the time I was living in a suburb of Calgary. I was working in an office block on 7th Avenue, which is the main drag in Calgary. Calgary went totally crazy in the run-up to the winter Olympics, but I won’t go into all that here. Suffice to say, I worked on 7th Avenue and hanged out in all the bars there, in one of which I briefly met Eddie the Eagle; this, shortly before the Winter Olympics began in February 1988.
Eddie and I shook hands, and all the rest of it, because we were two Englishman seven thousand miles from home. At the time Eddie was completely unknown. Not much more than a week after meeting him, Eddie was famous not only in Calgary, but also in Canada and the rest of the world.
I doubt if Eddie will remember our brief meeting all those years ago; and indeed I’ve no idea if the guy is still alive. I’ll have to go and look it up.
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Bravo Eddie and bravo Rob-san. 9/10 for the haiku: point deducted for not mentioning cherry blossoms 
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I’ve looked-up Eddie the Eagle and he is apparently still alive; and I was surprised to learn that he is about the same age as me.
Eddie the Eagle came last in most of the ski jump events he took part in; but by God, it takes balls to do that (see the above clip).
Karen, with regard to ‘cherry blossoms’ were you referring to a piece I did about the Hiroshima bomb? It’s a fascinating story that involves a quite large theatre company who were living right in the centre of Hiroshima when ‘Little Boy’ exploded.
No Rob, I thought pure haikus were always on the theme of nature, that’s probably some Eurocentric ballox I picked up from somewhere.
As for the ski jump I completely agree, there’s no way on earth I’d stand at the top of that ramp and do anything other than dissolve into tears.
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I really should get some sleep. I’ve just been watching the vote on the Emergency Act in the Canadian parliament. They’ve voted it through. I still don’t have the numbers yet.
Canada is a huge country with a small population, and in that sense this vote might seem insignificant.
But the point is, MPs have just voted for martial law.
It’s quite breathtaking.
The vote was actually quite close (this has still got to pass in the upper house, the Senate, which will be a rubber-stamping exercise):
Lawmakers in the country’s House of Commons voted 185 to 151 to affirm the powers on Monday night
This now means, amongst other things, that the Canadian ‘government’ can now sieze the bank accounts of anyone who disagrees with the government, whether that disagreement is online or on the streets. I should stress that this edict is not about violent protestors (there’s already laws for that); it’s aimed at peaceful protestors who the government doesn’t like, and the government can now legally bankrupt such protestors by confiscating all their money, and depriving them of their right to earn a living/put food on the table.
And if you think “Oh, it’s only Canada”, this complete tyranny will be coming to your country sometime soon.
It does seem the powers threaten everyone.
“The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said those who had their bank accounts frozen were “influencers in the illegal protest in Ottawa, and owners and/or drivers of vehicles who did not want to leave the area”, rebutting claims circulated by Conservative lawmakers that citizens who donated nominal amounts have had their accounts frozen.”
Not much of a rebuttal - the powers are there, as anyone can be accused of being ‘an influencer’.
“Mischief, a broad charge under Canadian law, could see protest leaders face the [sic - I’ve seen five or ten years quoted] years in jail if convicted.”
"The opposition New Democratic Party supported it, ensuring Trudeau had enough votes. The NDP’s leader, Jagmeet Singh, said there are protesters waiting in the areas surrounding Ottawa and in the capital itself.
“This is an attack on our democracy. This is a group of folks who are very clearly connected to the extreme right wing, The organisers clearly have a goal in mind to undermine democracy. That’s something we can’t allow to continue,” he said."
This is the opposition.
Words are losing their meaning.
How is it an attack on ‘democracy’ to protest against forced injection with an experimental
pathogen?
How is it not ‘extreme right wing’ to make protests illegal, and lock people up for years for offences such as ‘mischief’?
Nothing stopping this from spreading to other countries.
RobG how much difference do you think the apparent support of the public for these reactionary measures made to the government actions. Would other goverments like the UK have backed down. I like to think in the UK the people are less reactionary than that…
A really engaging thread and many thanks for the news updates from Lab Kanada. By Lab I mean it is increasingly obvious that different ‘strains’ of policy are being piloted in different countries to see how they play. One might even baptise these as variants.
Evvy has honed in on a key tactic:
All part of the “I find that offensive” agenda. Hence censorship is not really suppressing opposition but preventing amplification of harmful views. No proof of harm is needed, nor any proof that the Bad Actor intended any harm. She/he/they are free to think what they think, free to say it, but may not expect that anyone will permit the Bad Think to be heard/read. The whole pronouns policing agenda is at the vanguard of this.
There’s a popular online guess-the-word game called Wordle. You get six guesses to decide a hidden five letter word. The New York Times recently took over the site and from what I’ve heard one of their first actions was to remove any potentially harmful words from the database of words.
Quite how far this goes I don’t know but the online Scrabble-like games have been doing this for ages.
https://www.thegamer.com/wordle-bans-words/
Gotta keep safe, y’see.
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Evvy, people say that these protests don’t make any difference. Maybe that’s true, yet there’s been history making protests of late all around the world, including Australia and New Zealand (the one in NZ is one to watch for the way peaceful demonstrators have handled everything the authorities have thrown at them).
Whatever influence these massive demonstration have, the psychos are now closing the switch on the covid nonsense, and are now trying to terrify us with an equally nonsense war with Russia.
The psychos are getting desperate.
A ‘Freedom Convoy’ has now left California, due to arrive in Washington DC at the weekend. If this one turns big maybe I, or someone else, can start a separate thread on it.
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One last update: it’s being reported that Turdeau has revoked the Emergency Act. This is untrue. It can’t be revoked without a vote from parliament, and parliament have just voted it through.
The backpeddling and PR bullshit is because Canada is now in a state of boiling turmoil that I’ve never seen before. This 12 minute video sort of encapsulates it…
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Blinded by the “pemanent bullshit blizzad” (h/t Rhis), I somehow never thought of the RCMP as anything other than the good guys. I have a vague recollection of a mountie seconded to the New York cops. He was a real action hero but always very, very polite. Just more made in Hollywood. But is seems, just like the French CRS, they don’t give one iota about natural justice and humanity.
Is that the case since the senate hadn’t finished debating it? I don’t think it was fully enacted before it was revoked. Apparently all but a few of the bank acts that were frozen have been released.
Jackie, it was voted through by the Canadian parliament on Tuesday…
It still needed to be ratified by the Senate, yes, but then Trudeau suddenly revoked the Emergency Act.
I’m not sure how this all works under Canadian law. I mean that with regard to people who have had their bank accounts seized, and their livelihoods destroyed, under an Emergency Act that hadn’t been properly passed into law.
Whatever the answer is, I can’t see Trudeau surviving this.
(cue the next rigged election)
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I think you’re right that if the conservative parties (the only real alternative at this point and usually) here in Canada could get their shit together, they could probably win a majority in the next election. But as it is, their discourse is mainly through memes, intellectually on a middle school level. It’s really pathetic.
I feel that Trudeau has had to wear all this somewhat unfairly but he’s made a lot of bad moves too. Anyway, the people of Ottawa have their city back and that’s a good thing. A not insignificant number of the protesters have moved to private properties (by invitation) so the protest is not completely over. But many provinces have announced in the last week or so that they are lifting most vaccine mandates almost immediately and other pandemic restrictions within the next month.
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But many provinces have announced in the last week or so that they are lifting most vaccine mandates almost immediately and other pandemic restrictions within the next month.
Does this mean anything other than the gauleiters are talking shite/behaving like politicians as usual?
In the province where I live, the requirement for proof of vaccine to get into restaurants, bars, sporting events, concerts, etc ends on Feb 28. It remains in effect for hospitals and long term care homes, including for employees.
On March 21 the mask mandate for public places will end.
There has been talk about bringing people back to work who have been off on administrative leave due to not being vaccinated. It will be a good day when that happens.
We’ll see how it goes.