Sourry, eh?
I find myself wondering, with the Ottawa police so clearly either too inept or too corrupt to deal with this crowd, at what point do we start petitioning the Queen to issue Letters of Marque? Give me a fig leaf of legality, and I’m sure I could put together a squad of Road Privateers to go in, seize a truck, and deliver it for a bounty.
I hear crying from the rooftops from right wingers if there is a protest that slows traffic for a couple hours. Any word from them about these people blocking all routes in and out of a city for days and weeks?
Aaand, we have a winner!
I am hoping the convoy is as successful as last year’s Dumbkirk flotilla debacle. The only thing missing is an equally laffable moniker.
I kind of see a lot of irony from both sides, depending on who’s gore is being oxed wrt protests and disruptions. 
I have to say that, at least from what little I’ve seen about these protests, at least there hasn’t been a lot of burning cars, smashed shops, or general mayhem…which is a strong indication that this answers my OP in itself as if it were Americans of either stripe that’s kind of what we’d be seeing.
Oh the year was twenty-twenty two,
(how I wish I was in Sherbrooke now)
A Letter of Marque came from the Queen
to the rustiest wrecker I’ve ever seen.
God damn them all,
I was told we’d cruise the streets
for United We Roll.
We’d fire no guns, shed no tears!
Now I’m a broken man without a Timmie’s near,
The last of Horatius’ Privateers.
My apologies to Stan Rogers
Otta-Waaaahhhhhhh ?
And … for the silk screen T-shirt – US market:
Well, the Conservative Party (well, at lease some of them) have finally come out (weakly) in favor of ending the blockades.
Well, at least the ones at the border crossings that are starting to impact the bottom lines of big money donors. Ottawa can still go fuck itself apparently.
No, just fake calls to 911, tying up the lines so actual emergencies can’t be helped. Nice folks.
A couple billion in stalled cross-border trade dwarfs the damages involved in some busted shop windows and looting.
Well, I certainly hope I could do better than the Antelope!
I don’t think so, but if you have some evidence that the various rioting in the US costs are dwarfed by the couple billion in stalled cross-border trade I’m certainly willing to listen. From an article I was reading a few weeks ago, the costs in the US from rioting and civil commotion are up by some fairly hefty percentages since 2019…like thousands of percent in some cases. And that the costs of some individual riots and ‘busted shop windows’ have run in the hundreds of millions in some cities for a single riot or series of riots as well as the disruptions this has caused.
I’m skeptical that this Canadian protest is costing anything close to what we’ve seen in the US in the last 2 years, even counting all this cross-border trade disruption stuff, but maybe it is. It’s still a lot less violent which was the point I was making there…which was more than a little tongue in cheek to be honest, as this is Canada after all, so of course, it’s going to be orders of magnitude less violent from all sides.
While people are figuring the dollar costs of various cases of civil unrest, the reason for the unrest should be factored in. As in “There are people who are sick and tired of police murdering black people” and the resulting unrest cost X. And of course “I don’t want to get vaccinated or wear a mask” and the resulting unrest cost Y.
Yeah, that’s a tendency of an enlightened centrist, to find a way to see equivalence in any situation, no matter how nonequivalent it may be.
I don’t see that in the vast majority of protests here either.
I don’t see how that follows.
I’m sorry, we were talking about protests.
Now you have chosen to talk about riots, a completely different thing.
Are you under the mistaken impression that protests and riots are the same thing?
If so, you are wrong.
If not, then your attempt at bothsidesism falls flat.
And that is, of course, before we get into the nature of the reason behind the protests. Where the protests in the US that occasionally have some bad actors in them that caused damage were about people being oppressed, injured, and killed by agents of the government. The reason for the blockade of an entire city and significant parts of a country is because they don’t want to wear masks or get a vaccine in order to go to the hairdresser.
Bothsidism is usually pretty pathetic, but this is one of the most pathetic examples I’ve seen in a long time.
From your link:
Sometime before February 7, American authorities arrested a man from Akron, Ohio who had made a bomb threat against the Putnam County sheriff’s office in Ottawa, Ohio, as well as a false report that he had been shot. The man revealed that he believed he was calling the headquarters of the Ottawa Police Service. Both law enforcement agencies concluded that the reports were swatting attempts intended to disrupt police activity during the protest.
Am I getting that right? In German there is the expression “dümmer als die Polizei erlaubt” (dumber than allowed by the police) for such cases. They leave me torn apart between laughing and being really angry. Perhaps my understanding is wrong and I don’t get it. </ headshake… >
Were we? It seems a distinction without meaning to me, as many riots started off as protests.
Actually, what I was originally saying was that I was surprised that these protests hadn’t evolved into riots as often happens in the US, especially in the last 2-3 years. Certainly, most protests in the US don’t do this…something like 95% IIRC, of peaceful protests in the US stay that way. Maybe it’s even higher than that, I don’t know…and I’m betting that without Googling it you don’t either. But the costs in the US of protests that have gone violent aren’t dwarfed by the $2 billion in cross border trade disruptions from this protest, at least I’ve seen no evidence of that…especially if the same metrics are used to calculate trade or logistics disruptions due to protests in the US at the same time. Now, maybe the poster I was responding to meant any individual protest in the US, not all of them, but if so that was unclear.
You seem to be making a lot of assumptions and trying to put a lot of words into my mouth that I didn’t say. Your attempt to push your fist through my back and get me to be saying what you want to attack is fairly uncomfortable as well.
What’s funny here is I never said that the reasons were equivalent. That’s something (else) you are trying to sock puppet into my mouth.
I’ll take it that you Googled it, found out that the costs weren’t dwarfed, and decided to go on the offensive and be offensive in another way and attack me. That’s fine. I figure you think I’m on thin ice and this is a great way to push me over the edge, right?
And your automatic defensive and hostile response is…interesting.
Ah, I missed this.
So, this kind of cuts to the heart of this made-up issue of yours. You don’t really understand what I’m even saying, and you are offended because I laugh at your side as well as the other. So, let me clarify. I’m saying that depending on what your political leanings are, is going to depend on whether you think a given protest is fine or you have a major issue with it. This doesn’t mean I think the reasons for protest are equivalent, merely that what riles someone is going to depend on their political viewpoint. I think that’s pretty evident in these threads.
Right-wing conservatives aren’t riled at all by the protests in Canada (hell, they are even called Freedom Convoys, so better than fries!) or about similar protests in the US because they chafe under the whole mask mandate thingy. Left-wingers are outraged because they think the mandates are important and so they are riled about these protests.
Myself, I think that the mask mandate thing is going away anyway, and I wasn’t all that riled about having to wear a mask regardless…simply, I’m fine with it. I also didn’t and don’t have an issue getting vaccinated. What was interesting to me is seeing how the different political sides feel about the different protests happening and what pushes their buttons or doesn’t push their buttons.
As for this OP, what I wanted to know was if a lot of these truckers were from the US. A lot of these truckers, afaik, are taking stuff between the US and Canada, so it was plausible in my own mind that perhaps a lot of them were from the US, where mask mandates are something the various political sides have very different feelings about…while my impression is that Canadians aren’t as riled up about it. So, thought I’d ask, as I know there are a lot of Canadian 'dopers, and I don’t have very close contact anymore with my own friends in Canada (ironically, I used to live in Ottowa, so it’s interesting to see it in the news).
Here is my opinion… I don’t generally have a problem with non-violent protests, regardless of the reason for it. Yes, I’ll sneer at the anti-vaxxers and call them idiots, but if people are standing on the sidewalks holding signs I’m not in favor of setting dogs on them or anything.
When protests are deliberately disruptive to the point that it negatively impacts people’s lives, and/or becomes a public safety issue (blocking off major roads and the like), then I am not as okay with it. I have heard it said (I think on this board, but I may be misremembering) that those are the tactics you need to take to get attention, but I don’t accept that. Walking up and punching a random stranger in the face is also a way to get attention, but whatever your cause you are now a problem, and you are doing nothing good for society.
Riots and looting are bad. Arson is bad. Whichever side is doing that, you are not making a protest, you are not advocating for change. You are a criminal and/or a terrorist using a cause as a smokescreen for your criminality.
I personally feel that protesting the police murdering minorities is a good thing, and protesting because you want the government to stop public safety measures that are inconvenient to you is a bad thing. But at least in the US, you are granted the right to such a protest as long as you aren’t breaking other laws in the process, and I can accept people doing either of those things.
I do not have a good understanding of Canadian laws in those matters and have no opinion on it, because honestly I am too ignorant to have an informed one.
I think that peaceful protest is a hallmark in the US, and that most protests in the US are peaceful. Even in the violent ones, it’s generally a minority of protesters who turn violent, whether they are protesting right-wing things or left-wing things. Again, I wasn’t saying that the reasons for protesting are equivalent, merely that what is going to push someone’s buttons over a given protest is politically motivated. That’s all I was saying…and I wasn’t even all that serious about it up thread, merely tongue in cheek. The reaction to the few words I wrote up there has been a bit out of proportions to what I actually said, though as always my own jerking knee doesn’t help as this sort of thing does tend to rile me up…something that is well known by some posters who like to jerk my tail over stuff.