[purephase]

I've said this before. There's a strong libertarian bent to HN and I'm not surprised if there's a large contingent of this site that actively supports the convoy. There's people here that are strong supports of Peter Thiel, if that's any indication of where their sympathies lie.

But, most of them are not residents of Ottawa, and the lived experiences of people in that city, particurlarly those who have had run ins with the protesters, or struggled through the 16-18 hours / day of honking, had to walk around or be harrassed by them, see the awful imagery of Trump, Confederate etc. flags being waved around, the yellow star morons etc. cannot simply be dismissed as bad or inaccurate media.

A city is being held hostage by an extreme minority and, even in OPs post they mention that the Toronto police handled it properly, but question the admonition levied against the Ottawa police.

The Ottawa police are complicit in this now as well as city council. They sat on their hands while allowing this to spiral out of control, and now want to play the victim or blame others (e.g. blaming counter protesters today).

It doesn't matter if you side with the protest or not. The sheer fact that they've been allowed to have large impact on the city and it's residents, for this long, is proof that the so-called lack of freedom that they're fighting for is simply not the bogeyman they've made it out to be. Especially if you're white.

[j_walter]

>A city is being held hostage by an extreme minority and, even in OPs post they mention that the Toronto police handled it properly, but question the admonition levied against the Ottawa police.

>The Ottawa police are complicit in this now as well as city council. They sat on their hands while allowing this to spiral out of control, and now want to play the victim or blame others (e.g. blaming counter protesters today).

>It doesn't matter if you side with the protest or not. The sheer fact that they've been allowed to have large impact on the city and it's residents, for this long, is proof that the so-called lack of freedom that they're fighting for is simply not the bogeyman they've made it out to be. Especially if you're white.

This is really not much different than how Portland handled the BLM protests in 2020. 100 straight nights of extreme protests with violence against police and federal buildings. Only difference is this is during the night and many neighborhoods were terrorized as it moved from downtown. Not much media coverage of this other than conservative journalist Andy Ngo who has himself been violently targeted for simply recording and publishing video of what is happening.

[pessimizer]

A major difference is that the police would issue dispersal orders, then attack the BLM protesters indiscriminately, or call curfews which basically declared open season on any kind of protester, journalist, civilian, doing anything outdoors after X o'clock. The police were shooting rubber bullets at people sitting on their own porches.

This is not how Ottawa is being handled, this is not how January 6th was handled, and if BLM protesters decided they were going to shut down an international bridge that provided 1/3 of trade with the US, that wouldn't have made it a hour before an extreme response was taken.

If the trucker protest were treated like the BLM protests, you'd see people blinded and dead, and it would be completely torn apart every night to have to be reassembled the next day. At least compare it to Occupy, although they were in a park instead of blocking roads.

[j_walter]

The police protected buildings from being set on fire and their officers being attacked with lasers and fireworks. Dispersal orders were only given AFTER the protests turned violent.

Comparing 100+ nights of protests and riots with Jan 6th is ridiculous...one was night after night of the same thing and having a plan in place to defend and the other is a single day where the police lost control and they actually shot someone with real bullets.

[FireBeyond]

> A major difference is that the police would issue dispersal orders, then attack the BLM protesters indiscriminately, or call curfews which basically declared open season on any kind of protester, journalist, civilian, doing anything outdoors after X o'clock. The police were shooting rubber bullets at people sitting on their own porches.

Whilst also advising Proud Boys and Three Per Centers of their "enforcement plans", texting them to "take cover" and that they'd be given an "all clear" when they come back out.

Or being advised that although their leaders had active arrest warrants, that they would not be arrested at any protests that were "supervised" by Portland Police Department, so they should "feel free" to come to protests.

[j_walter]

They were in contact with both sides of the conflicts...only one side made their plans clear and also applied for permits. I'm not saying it was the right call, but one side was violent toward police and the other was not...not a huge surprise that the police would choose to work with them.

[FireBeyond]

The Proud Boys applied for a small fraction of permits.

And if you are ordering a protest to disperse, you don't tell one side to go home. If you have a curfew (leaving aside opinions there), it's not a curfew for one side.

If you're telling people who have warrants for their arrest that you will actively not only NOT arrest them but protect them, that's not working with them, that's working for them. Which is unsurprising in PDX, given how many LEOs are members of those same organizations.

Nothing in what you said was a good justification. You're right though, it's not a huge surprise that police would choose to work with militant right wing organizations.

[_-david-_]

>this is not how January 6th was handled

January 6th police had real bullets and shot and killed a person. You could argue Jan 6th was handled more strictly than BLM.

[MertsA]

Of the 3 fatalities during that riot 2 were self inflicted and the only remaining one was when a rioter breached the last line of defence between the people screaming "Hang Mike Pence!" and 60 to 80 members of congress. There's been speculation that the tunnel entrance down the hallway from where the shooting occurred was where Mike Pence was evacuated through. I was amazed at the level of restraint displayed by the capitol police in contrast to clearing of lafayette square in the summer with pepper balls, tear gas, flash bangs, etc. At that time the park police didn't even bother to order the crowd to disperse until after they had already started attacking the crowd.

They did all that for a photo op vs. Capitol police falling back as far as they could without risking the lives of members of Congress. Even in the aftermath once the building was evacuated and they were clearing the grounds they handled that with kid gloves compared to many of the BLM protests.

[purephase]

Not much media coverage? I saw coverage of it all the time. It was covered as if it was the end of civilization and it continues to push the narrative today that BLM protests were burning cities to the ground across the country.

I'm not sure where you're getting this whole idea that there wasn't much media coverage on it. A quick google search shows literally thousands of news stories about it.

[j_walter]

Main stream media...I live near Portland and the local news covered very little about it. 30 second clip of the peaceful start...and little about the destruction and chaos that was seen night after night.

Eventually even the local news started showing what was going on when their crew were attacked covering the story. However this happened many times before and they simply left and didn't cover what was happening.

https://katu.com/news/local/police-declare-riot-near-justice...

[toofy]

> Not much media coverage..

oh this is absurd.

BLM was the lead story in just about every newspaper, news channel, magazine and aggregator sites for weeks.

I noticed on a sibling comment you claim to live near Portland and implied that local media did minimal coverage which is also absurd. Again, it was covered obsessively by just about every single local news outlets from their local networks, papers, and podcasts.

No media outlet was trying to hide BLM from you.

[j_walter]

BLM was...Antifa riots every night were not. The media seemed to just ignore them...maybe with the theory that they would stop if not getting covered. Millions in damage, many police officers hurt and hundreds of businesses impacted nightly. Go look for stories on all the businesses that left downtown Portland because of the riots and the lack of city leadership to address them. On top of homeless, crime and drugs...it's an absolute shit show.

[purephase]

Again, a quick google search shows thousands of articles that specifically tie antifa to the riots in Portland.

The media did not ignore it at all. If anything, I'd believe that tie-in with "antifa" is greatly exagerrated by the media, since it seems like the situation in Portland is better explained via the horrible police escalation that happened there and the fact that there's a variety of groups that jumped into the vacuum.

[oo0shiny]

Andy Ngo isn't exactly a reliable source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Ngo#Credibility

[j_walter]

He posts video...how is raw video not a reliable source? He certainly has an agenda, but also posts things that many will not. He was not afraid to post video when the actual news teams were threatened and attacked during the riots (by specific groups that you can't really talk about since they don't exist...it's just an idea).

[FredPret]

But I'm sure his Wikipedia page is

[autoexec]

The nice thing about Wikipedia is that claims are sourced. I had no idea who this guy was, but I looked over the statements critical of his credibility and at first glance many of them are sourced at heavily biased media outlets which isn't encouraging. I'm not digging into it enough to say those articles are wrong, but I'd say the clams that he isn't credibile on his wikipedia page aren't looking very convincing so far, or at the very least that view on the guy doesn't seem widely accepted by mainstream sources.

[FredPret]

Since even a sourced and cited claim can be utterly bogus, it is actually worse. Because it looks authoritative at a glance when there are many citations next to a claim.

But some citations are nature.com, and some are People Magazine, and they all get the same superscript number.

[Apocryphon]

Then if those claims are bogus, it becomes a matter of your sources vs. their sources, and it ends up all being a matter of faith and perhaps gut feeling.

[newsbinator]

> I've said this before. There's a strong libertarian bent to HN and I'm not surprised if there's a large contingent of this site that actively supports the convoy. There's people here that are strong supports of Peter Thiel, if that's any indication of where their sympathies lie.

To me the political bent of HN isn't relevant when reading a comment. I'd rather take each comment on its own merits, without guessing or assuming what the ideology of the commenter would have to be.

I recently lived in a country in which wearing the wrong color socks is grounds for instant prison, so I prefer when my government's monopoly on violence errs on the side of restraint, as in the case of these protestors.

Should individual protestors get shut down when they harass mask-wearing doctors or honk horns in the middle of the night? Obviously.

But there is some fuzzy line in which we let protestors do otherwise illegal or fineable things that we don't let individuals do.

I could be convinced that skin color is a factor as you mentioned, but at the moment I have no idea.

[SauciestGNU]

I don't know what the answer is with these protests, but criminalizing them isn't the answer. I'm an active leftist and do a lot of mutual aid and protesting. I've been beaten by cops and had them deploy munitions against me. Giving cops more latitude to deal with this protest movement will mean that they deploy even more force against me the next time I'm politely asking that they stop murdering people.

[purephase]

The original comment was mentioning the downvotes, not comments. I agree on engaging comments (hence this conversation) but there's definitely brigading happening with votes if you post anything that the libertarians disagree with.

[Dig1t]

I'm a total moderate, I try very hard not to view these things through a partisan lens. As a free thinking human I feel no need to have my opinions dictated by any group of people. I think your comment is one that has some merit WRT the police's actions and what they might be able to do better, but it is framed in such a hostile, inflammatory, extremely partisan way. You criticize this website for being bent on some partisan streak that you don't like and needlessly bring race into the conversation when this entire thing has nothing to do with race whatsoever.

> is proof that the so-called lack of freedom that they're fighting for is simply not the bogeyman they've made it out to be

It's disingenuous to equate the lack of freedom that they are talking about with the lack of freedom to protest. They are not the same thing, the protesters are talking about vaccine mandates specifically.

[AzzieElbab]

what is wrong with listening to "minorities". Doesnt BLM represent a minority, especially in Canada? Also, a couple of confederate and nazi flags do not define these protests.

[purephase]

Hahaha.. this is a hilarious comment.

These people are not the minority. They're self-professed victimes of so-called tyranny that doesn't exist. The sheer fact that they're able to protest for this long, in this way, at the nations capital is ample evidence that this so-called tyranny they're fighting is a delusion.

Equivocating that with the lived experience of millions of people who are fighting for true equality is truly a laughable position.

Honk, I guess.

[AzzieElbab]

minority does not need to be defined by race sex or religion. What about people who had covid and reluctant about vaccines? All that word soup is irrelevant. Getting fired after having worked through the heights of epidemic is a serious "lived experience" and also "an ample evidence" of bureaucratic overreach. Anyway, bunch of provinces including Ontario already cancelled vaccine mandates and vaccine passports, only real holdouts are BC and Quebec. Trackers already won. The government can easily deescalate but choosing not to due fear and spite

[purephase]

Getting fired for not getting vaccines was a line that I didn't agree with.

However, the vast majority of organizations that did this were private though, and it was the organization that implemented these policies. I'd hardly equate that with government overreach, and especially not the federal government if you're a nurse/healthcare worker, or worked in a local municipal government.

My point is that these protests don't have anything to do with vaccines, mandates or some perceived minority status that not following them bestows (which, again, is a choice..). If that was the case, they would not be in Ottawa. There might be some people paying lip service to these ideas, but the majority of the people protesting are self-labelling as minorities due to some perception of tyranny from the federal government that does not exist.

Unless you're a federal employee that was fired due to your position on vaccines (over 95% of federal employees are vaccinated) then protesting in Ottawa doesn't make any sense.

[armagon]

It seems pretty clear to me that the protests have everything to do with the vaccine mandates.

Why should only people who are fired be allowed to protest? Most of the truckers are vaccinated, but they are protesting for the right of those who aren't to be allowed to do their job.

[purephase]

If they actually have anything to do with the mandates, then protesting in Ottawa doesn't make any sense.

All of the health and COVID mandate policy is set at the provincial level in Canada, not federally. They should be protesting in Toronto, or other provincial capitals.

However, a good percentage of provincial capitals are currently Conservative governments. So, by deliberatly choosing Ottawa, they're protesting legitimately elected government to force them to step down (despite being democratically elected 6 months ago) and install a new leadership panel made up of the convoy leadership.

https://twitter.com/Justin_Ling/status/1490811201089159170

[AzzieElbab]

Majority of the BLM weren’t killed by a cop standing on their necks. Your point was understood and invalidated

[roenxi]

> ... and it was the organization that implemented these policies ...

That may not be true. It is common for governments to implement the really unpleasant policies by using businesses as an enforcement arm (eg, surveillance via banks and telecom companies). It bears asking why companies have all, in coordination, picked up a set of policies that are both ineffective and divisive - it is entirely on the table that it is because of government pressure in the form of OH&S guidelines.

Firing unvaccinated people barely does anything w.r.t. changing the odds that people get COVID eventually. We've seen ample evidence that being vaccinated doesn't change the transmissible situation. So why are companies doing this? Their employees are still going to turn up and transmit COVID. By this point, the anti-vaccine types have probably caught COVID and gained natural immunity anyway so these policies would represent companies shooting themselves in the foot. It is possible they'd do that of their own initiative but it is nevertheless a bit weird.

> My point is that these protests don't have anything to do with vaccines, mandates or some perceived minority status...

Why do you think these protests have just mushroomed up? Have trucker protests been an ongoing thing in Canada for many decades?

[adolph]

Canada is confusing. The below two comments come from the same person, likely Canadian, referring to other Canadians who are an extreme minority who are not the minority.

> > A city is being held hostage by an extreme minority

> These people are not the minority.

[purephase]

My mistake. In my first comment, I should have referred to the truck convoy protesters as perceiving themselves as having minority status. I made this comment before people starting to compare these protests to BLM, which is for a an actual minority group.

[redml]

thats a lot of mental gymnastics you're doing there to avoid that cognitive dissonance

[dahfizz]

You literally called them a minority:

> A city is being held hostage by an extreme minority

[cf100clunk]

False equivalence? The behaviour of these recent protestors is the crux of the issue.

[Karrot_Kream]

> I've said this before. There's a strong libertarian bent to HN and I'm not surprised if there's a large contingent of this site that actively supports the convoy. There's people here that are strong supports of Peter Thiel, if that's any indication of where their sympathies lie.

Wait and you've extrapolated this from claims of a downvote made in the first hour after posting a reply on a politically controversial topic? HN is a huge site, are you really expecting unanimous political views? This is par for the course on these threads.

[MomoXenosaga]

They had farmer protests in the Netherlands with tractors. I think we may have invented it?

https://www.politico.eu/article/angry-dutch-farmers-swarm-th...

Anyway society loved it at first until they caused too many traffic jams. Public opinion turned and it was over quickly. If you are a work at home software dev these kind of protests don't affect you until Amazon stops delivering.

[blindmute]

Making one city a bit uncomfortable temporarily is well worth creating justice for an entire country permanently. Sucks for Ottowans, but the truckers are doing the right thing morally.