Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Trump's terrorists hate America. 

The same far-right influencers behind the effort to overturn the 2020 election are pushing for a convoy on DC



Many of the same players who were involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 election in the United States are celebrating the Canadian truckers convoy that has crippled Ottawa, while calling for a duplicate effort targeting Washington, DC.

At the top of the list is Donald Trump himself, who issued a statement on Feb. 4 deriding Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a “far-left lunatic… who has destroyed Canada with insane Covid mandates.” Trump added: “Now, thankfully, the Freedom Convoy could be coming to DC with American Truckers who want to protest Biden’s ridiculous Covid policies.”

The People’s Convoy, with a Facebook group boasting 48,100 members and Telegram channel with 38,000 members, had previously publicized March 1 as a start date, but by the past weekend organizers were signaling that the date was up in the air again. In a video shared on the group’s telegram channel, organizer Jeremy Johnson reported that leaders would hold a Zoom meeting on Feb. 5 “with a very large group of people,” while predicting, “After that Zoom meeting on we’re going to be able to come out with a hell of a lot more information than what we’ve been able to do so far.” In the same video, Johnson said his group had joined forces with Leigh Dundas, a social media influencer anti-vax advocate from southern California who helped mobilize Trump supporters to come to Washington, DC on Jan. 5, 2021.

In a Facebook Live video on Feb. 4, Dundas briefly touched on the DC convoy, saying, “US convoy coming soon. Sit tight, guys. I don’t want to rush to judgement on this one. I’m working with a lot of different trucking factions over the next 48 hours here. I think we’re going to have big announcements starting at the end of the week or next week.”

Dundas could not be reached for comment by Facebook or email for this story.

Dundas has previously said she participated in a conference call with Trump’s campaign lawyers on the day after media organizations declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election. In a video livestreamed that day, she hit on several talking points of the campaign, including arguments that the fight was not about Trump, but “about the very bedrock of our constitutional republic.” On Dec. 29, Dundas said in a video that was viewed 33,000 times that Trump’s followers “need to show up in force in Washington, DC on January 6th,” and that “when those votes are counted by [Vice President Mike] Pence and his friends on January 6th, we need to be there in person to ensure there is integrity in that process, and also to send one hell of a message as to what will happen, if there’s not.”

Since the attempted insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, Dundas has held a slot in the Reawaken America Tour, a far-right extravaganza headlined by retired Lt. General Mike Flynn that showcases various proponents of the Big Lie, anti-vaxxers and Christian nationalists.

Dundas has been pushing for truckers to use their vehicles as force for economic disruption since at least last November. That month, Dundas organized a four-day event billed as a “Nationwide Walkout,” which she also described as a “strike.” In a Nov. 9 interview with Scott McKay, also a speaker in the Reawaken America Tour, Dundas asked truck drivers to email her directly “to get more involved.” A graphic posted on her Facebook page two days later solicited drivers to “help us stand against the vaccine mandates by driving your rig to the Golden Gate Bridge” in San Francisco. It's unclear whether any truckers obliged Dundas’ request.

During the Nov. 9 interview, Dundas leveled a baseless accusation that the Biden administration is killing people through with its policies surrounding the Covid vaccine, which has been proven to be safe and effective.

“What Biden has done is illegal, unlawful, unconstitutional, you name it,” Dundas told McKay. “If there’s a prefix like U-N in front of it, he’s doing it. And he’s saying you have got to get what’s essentially a kill shot.”

McKay rejoined with a similarly incendiary statement accusing hospitals of “murder,” without providing specific detail.

“This is no longer playtime,” said McKay, a podcaster and former bodybuilder who goes by the moniker “the Patriot Streetfighter.” “These people are playing for keeps. They’re going for broke. They’re looking to bring this country down, bury, literally bury us, and they’re doing it. Because now we got a murder machine inside the hospitals where they’re killing people left and right.

“I don’t know what else will make people step forward and tell us, ‘I am done with this bulls**t,’” McKay continued. “It is time to bring the force of We The People against these bas**rds, and bring ’em to their knees.”

During a previous podcast, McKay enlisted his listeners to harass members of the Ankeny Community School Board in Iowa over their support of masking, urging them to “carpet bomb these boneheads with emails” and “beat the s**t out of them,” according to a report by the Daily Beast.

While organizers iron out the details for the American version, proponents of the lie that Trump won the 2020 election are publicly cheering the siege on Ottawa.

Flynn, who urged Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy the military to “rerun” the election before he left office in disgrace, posted a video of a testimonial from a Canadian truck driver to his 308,600 subscribers on Telegram on Feb. 1.

“We are up against pure evil in this fight to save our freedoms and our children,” Flynn wrote in his post to promote the video. “God bless these truckers and all others fighting to save us from these tyrannical bastards who hide behind their little lives and walls.”

Ivan Raiklin, an Army Reserve officer and Flynn associate who pushed the legal theory that Pence had the power to set aside electoral votes for Biden, used his Telegram account on Sunday to call for the arrest of Prime Minister Trudeau.

“1. Lift all CCP-19 mandates,” he wrote. “2. Arrest every official: national, provincial, local that implemented or enforced those mandates. 3. Try Justin for treason after his apology and after he begs for mercy.”

US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who reportedly met with Trump in December 2020 to discuss options for overturning the election, joined former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on his “War Room Pandemic” podcast on Monday to celebrate the Ottawa blockade.

“I wish we had people standing like that in our country,” she said. “Those truckers are doing exactly what people should be doing in every single country across the world where they’re forcing these tyrannical Covid mandates where they have enforced shutdowns.”

Jack Posobiec, the right-wing disinformation specialist who promoted the Pizzagate conspiracy and tweeted out the #StopTheSteal hashtag almost two months in advance of the 2020 election, has been commenting prolifically on events in Canada to his 171,358 subscribers on Telegram.

On Sunday, Posobiec posted a photograph of an Ottawa resident holding a sign reading, “I love vaccines, truckers go home,” while mocking it with the text: “You heard her, lads, Truckers Go Home and don’t come back!”

A response from a user named “Sinjin” was typical among the 250-plus comments: “Let that libtard Socialist starve to death. Please.”

Another user, “Jody,” raised the stakes to antisemitic murder: “I’m thinking we go into one big room and shoot Soros, Rockefellers, Rothschilds and the rest of them to death. Then we can go back to normal.”

In another post on Sunday, Posobiec compared Trudeau to the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

“Trudeau is about to crack down on the peaceful protesters like a Castro,” he wrote.

One user, “john b.,” responded: “Sounds like Canada could use a sharpshooter.”

“Tom Papp” echoed the sentiment, writing, “Lock and load!!!”

https://www.rawstory.com/freedom-convoy-2656591373/

[Richard Smith]

Trump's terrorists hate America. 

The same far-right influencers behind the effort to overturn the 2020 election are pushing for a convoy on DC

Imagine referring to ordinary people, including truckers that kept the country supplied during the Biden/Trudeau lockdown as terrorists.  Shameful.   The leftists like Biden and Trudeau wildly overplayed their hand using the pandemic as a pretense to gain power.  Now the chickens are coming home to roost, and they are completely on the retreat.  Trudeau is in hiding.   Biden's handlers will see the light soon and try to save themselves by declaring victory over COVID in a forlorn effort to stop the red tsunami in the upcoming election that will sweep them out of power.

[Rick Plant]

Imagine referring to ordinary people, including truckers that kept the country supplied during the Biden/Trudeau lockdown as terrorists.  Shameful.   The leftists like Biden and Trudeau wildly overplayed their hand using the pandemic as a pretense to gain power.  Now the chickens are coming home to roost, and they are completely on the retreat.  Trudeau is in hiding.   Biden's handlers will see the light soon and try to save themselves by declaring victory over COVID in a forlorn effect to stop the red tsunami in the upcoming election that will sweep them out of power.

Nice right wing propaganda. "Ordinary people" don't beat cops during an insurrection and attempt a coup to overthrow the government like Trump's terrorists did.

[Rick Plant]

Trump's terrorists headed up north to Canada to wreak havoc. This whole thing is a far right wing funded and coordinated plot as they use the pandemic to push their far right wing extremism attempting to overthrow the government. These thugs are responsible for keeping this pandemic going and need to be moved out. Disrupting and occupying a major city is illegal, and if they refuse to move out, put them all in jail where they belong.     

Neo-Nazis and QAnon: how Canadian truckers’ anti-vaccine protest was steered by extremists
Ottawa’s occupation was a result of unrivaled coordination between anti-vax and anti-government organizations



Thousands of demonstrators have successfully occupied Canada’s frigid capital for days, and say they plan on staying as long as it takes to thwart the country’s vaccine requirements.

The brazen occupation of Ottawa came as a result of unprecedented coordination between various anti-vaccine and anti-government organizations and activists, and has been seized on by similar groups around the world.

It may herald the revenge of the anti-vaxxers.

The so-called “freedom convoy” – which departed for Ottawa on 23 January – was the brainchild of James Bauder, an admitted conspiracy theorist who has endorsed the QAnon movement and called Covid-19 “the biggest political scam in history”. Bauder’s group, Canada Unity, contends that vaccine mandates and passports are illegal under Canada’s constitution, the Nuremberg Code and a host of other international conventions.

Bauder has long been a fringe figure, but his movement caught a gulf stream of support after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced last year that truckers crossing the US-Canada border would need to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19. The supposed plight of the truckers proved to be a compelling public relations angle and attracted an array of fellow travelers.

Until now, a litany of organizations had protested Canada’s strict public health measures, but largely in isolation. One such group, Hold Fast Canada, had organized pickets of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s headquarters, where they claimed that concentration camps had already been introduced in the country.

Another group, Action4Canada, launched legal challenges to mask and vaccine mandates. In one 400-page court filing, they allege that the “false pronouncement of a Covid-19 ‘pandemic’” was carried out, at least in part, by Bill Gates and a “New World (Economic) Order” to facilitate the injection of 5G-enabled microchips into the population.

Both groups are listed as “participating groups” on the Canada Unity website, and sent vehicles and personnel to join the convoy.

Other organizers joined Bauder, including Chris Barber, a Saskatchewan trucker who was fined $14,000 in October for violating provincial public health measures; Tamara Lich, an activist for a fringe political party advocating that Western Canada should become an independent state; Benjamin Dichter, who has warned of the “growing Islamization of Canada”; and Pat King, an anti-government agitator who has repeatedly called for Trudeau to be arrested.

Since they have arrived in Ottawa, the extreme elements of the protest have been visible: neo-Nazi and Confederate flags were seen flying, QAnon logos were emblazoned on trucks and signs and stickers were pasted to telephone poles around the occupied area bear Trudeau’s face, reading: “Wanted for crimes against humanity.”

The official line from Bauder and his co-organizers, however, has remained focused; in a Facebook live broadcast, Bauder instructed his supporters to “stop talking about the vaccine” and instead stick to message of “freedom”.

Such strict message control has attracted mainstream support. Numerous members of the Conservative party, Canada’s official opposition, have come out to meet the protesters. Elon Musk and Donald Trump have both endorsed the convoy. Fox broadcasters Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson have provided glowing updates on the continuing occupation.

Bauder vowed the convoy would camp out in Ottawa until their demands are met, insisting to his followers that a “memorandum of understanding” would force the government’s hand, possibly even triggering fresh elections, if enough people sign.

A Canada Unity organizer went further, saying it would require the Senate to “go after the prime minister” for “corruption” and “fascism”. There is no legal basis for those claims.

King has laid out a more direct plan of action to the occupiers: “What we want to focus on is our politicians, their houses, their locations,” he said in a January Facebook stream. If political pressure doesn’t work, King said, blocking major supply chains “will be later on”.

Soon after, the head of security for Parliament issued an extraordinary warning to Members of Parliament to avoid the protest entirely, for their own safety.

The occupiers have deliberately made life difficult for anyone in Ottawa’s downtown core. Trucks have been laying on their air horns throughout the day, often well into the early morning hours. An Ottawa court granted an injunction Monday afternoon, ordering that the honking must cease.

In the shadow of Parliament, a flatbed truck was converted into a stage – functioning as a speaker’s corner during the day, where far-right politicians and occupiers took the microphone to decry Trudeau and Covid vaccines. At night, the stage functions as a DJ booth for raucous dance parties.

Technology has made the occupation even easier: drivers share information on routes and the best ways to evade police barricades via the walkie talkie app Zello. Organizers in other cities use the secure messaging app Telegram to share information, coordinate messaging and plan solidarity protests.

The occupiers now have the resources to stay for an extended period of time: they have raised more than C$6mthrough various crowdfunding platforms, in cash and Bitcoin, despite having been booted from GoFundMe’s platform after raising over C$10m.

The Ottawa occupation is proof that a few thousand determined protesters can overwhelm police and shut down major cities with enough vehicles and coordination. Solidarity convoys have already shut down the busy Coutts border crossing between Alberta and Montana, strained police resources in Toronto and Quebec City, and activists as far away as Helsinki, Canberra, London, and Brussels have taken not. On the convoy channels, protestors warn this is just the beginning.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/08/canada-ottawa-trucker-protest-extremist-qanon-neo-nazi

[Richard Smith]

Nice right wing propaganda. "Ordinary people" don't beat cops during an insurrection and attempt a coup to overthrow the government like Trump's terrorists did.

They are beating cops in Canada?  Where is the concern for cops being murdered due to the policies of the leftists like Biden and the Dems?

[Richard Smith]

Trump's terrorists headed up north to Canada to wreak havoc. This whole thing is a far right wing funded and coordinated plot as they use the pandemic to push their far right wing extremism attempting to overthrow the government. These thugs are responsible for keeping this pandemic going and need to be moved out. Disrupting and occupying a major city is illegal, and if they refuse to move out, put them all in jail where they belong.     

You really have a great enthusiasm for jailing anyone who voice a dissenting view.  You really want to lock up truckers and farmers in Canada for exercising their right to protest?  In addition to shortages from the unconstitutional vaccine mandates, you want to arrest the very people who grow and deliver the food and supplies.  Wow. 

[Rick Plant]

Sidney Powell claims in court docs she shouldn't be disbarred because 'perhaps' election conspiracies are real



Top Donald Trump ally Sidney Powell is protesting the referral for her disbarment by claiming that it's entirely possible that everything she said could have been true.

In Aug. 2021, Powell and other lawyers faced sanctions after filing a conspiracy lawsuit in Michigan courts. U.S. District Court Judge Linda Parker ordered Powell's legal team to pay $21,964.75 for attorneys' fees for defendants Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. She also said that Powell and other lawyers had to pay $153,285.62 for legal fees to the city of Detroit.

Now, Powell is asking the U.S. Appeals Court to reverse the sanctions because the charges could have been true.

Screen captures posted by Law & Crime's Adam Klasfeld show that Powell said that the District Court made it sound like everything they submitted in court was fraudulent. Worse, she said that the self-described "Kraken" lawyers seem like "overwrought, dangerous lunatics."

"But prior and subsequent lawsuits have pointed to very similar problems. And dozens of laws have been enacted by state legislatures in response to concerns similar to those raised in the complaint. Millions of Americans believe the central contentions of the complaint to be true, and perhaps they are," the filing says.

It's reminiscent of indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick both explained that the reason the state had to pass regulations to restrict voting was that people felt like there was voter fraud, even if it didn't exist. They wanted to renew confidence in the election, they explained.

See the screen captures of Powell's filing below:



The appellate brief also argues that "perhaps" their election conspiracy theories are true because "Millions of Americans" believe them and act accordingly in courts and state Legislatures.



https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/sidney-powell-kraken-lawyers-ask-appeals-court-to-reverse-intemperate-sanctions-order-were-not-overwrought-dangerous-lunatics/

[Rick Plant]

You really have a great enthusiasm for jailing anyone who voice a dissenting view.  You really want to lock up truckers and farmers in Canada for exercising their right to protest?  In addition to shortages from the unconstitutional vaccine mandates, you want to arrest the very people who grow and deliver the food and supplies.  Wow.

First of all, it's not "unconstitutional" for the Canadian and American government to implement safety measures to protect the lives of their citizens. That is the purpose of having a government in the first place. Seat belts were mandated throughout the country to save lives and that is not "unconsitutional".     

Masks prevent the transmission of the virus and was implemented to help control the spread of Covid. There is nothing "unconsitutional" about stopping the spread of a highly transmissible virus. That is a health and safety measure which every government has the right to mandate.

Vaccines help to stop the spread of the virus and to help keep people from dying. There is nothing "unconsitutional" about mandating a covid vaccine when schools already mandate vaccines for other diseases. Right wingers want to politicize COVID in order to cause chaos and disruption of our government.   

Mandates are overwhelmingly supported by Canadian and American citizens because they want this pandemic to end. Close to 90% of truckers and farmers in Canada are vaccinated and support the mandates. These far right wingers who staged this "convoy" are in the minority, and are using objection to mandates as a way to push their right wing extremism, disrupt government, and cause chaos through violence.

These far right wingers do not have a right to shut down a major city, occupy it, terrorize citizens, and refuse to leave. That is not "protesting". That is terrorism.  Disruption of government and the function of a major city is against the law. Violaters will be jailed according to the law which is law and order. Ottawa has declared a state of emergency due to the chaos and right wing civil unrest.

Ottawa declares state of emergency over COVID protests
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ottawa-freedom-convoy-trucker-protest-state-of-emergency-covid/

We recently had two elections in Canada and the United States. The Liberal Party and the Democratic Party both easily won elections because the overwhelming majority of Canadians and Americans support their policies. The far right is in the minority and will never be in power. And their attempts to destroy our governments through chaos and violence will fail. Americans are sick of this and will make sure to defeat these right wing fascists in even larger numbers in November.     
 

Analysis: Majority of Canadians disagree with ‘freedom convoy’ on vaccine mandates and lockdowns

The arrival of the self-styled “freedom convoy” in Ottawa this week has dominated headlines, but do the demonstrators represent the views of most Canadians? When it comes to their stark opposition to government-imposed restrictions and vaccine mandates, research shows the protesters clearly represent a minority view — no matter how vocal they are.

Most Canadians support government measures to help control the spread of COVID-19, according to our ongoing public opinion study. Known as the COVID-19 Monitor, the study of Canadians’ attitudes relating to the COVID-19 pandemic and public policy interventions has been running since shortly after the first COVID-19-related government restrictions were introduced in March 2020. It has amassed more than 100,000 respondents, making it one of the largest continuing studies of Canadian attitudes toward the pandemic.

The study is a partnership between McMaster University’s Digital Society Lab and Vox Pop Labs, a social enterprise that conducts public opinion research polling. We hold positions with both organizations.

Our findings indicate that a majority of Canadians support most of the measures that have been employed by federal and provincial governments aimed at preventing the transmission of COVID-19. In most cases support has remained relatively stable since the beginning of the pandemic.

Our objective in reporting the results of this study is not to pass judgement on the views of the “freedom convoy” demonstrators or their supporters. We simply offer a series of empirical tests of the claims that those views are widely shared among Canadians. Our analysis of the data from the COVID-19 Monitor indicates that such claims are significantly exaggerated.

The most recent wave of the COVID-19 Monitor study was conducted online from Jan. 4-10, 2022, and completed by 2,339 respondents randomly selected from the Vox Pop Labs online respondent panel. The respondents were weighted by census estimates of age, education, region, sex and vote choice in the 2021 federal election to reflect a representative sample of the Canadian population.

Vaccine mandates

Although they are widely attributed as the catalyst for the trucker rally, vaccine mandates actually enjoy high levels of support among Canadians. Survey data shows approximately four out of five Canadians agree that health- and long-term care workers should be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Roughly three-quarters of Canadians think that vaccines should be mandatory for government workers and politicians.

There is even broad-based support for a vaccine mandate for all non-exempt adults over the age of 18, with 70 per cent of Canadians indicating that they back the measure to some extent. That support begins to decline slightly when it comes to opinions on mandatory vaccines for teenagers and adolescents. It drops precipitously to just under 50 per cent for children under the age of five.



Vaccine passports

A majority of Canadians agree with the requirement to provide proof of vaccination against COVID-19 in order to undertake certain activities. We observed that an estimated four out of every five Canadians supports vaccine passports for air or cruise ship travel. Support tapers off ever-so-slightly for proof of vaccination in venues such as movie theatres, restaurants and gyms.

Of all the activities posed to survey respondents, shopping at a grocery store registered the lowest level of support for requiring vaccine passports. Just 50 per cent of Canadians indicated that they would agree with such a measure.



Restrictions

Canadians are also broadly supportive of most government-imposed restrictions associated with COVID-19. The field dates of this latest wave of the COVID-19 Monitor study coincide with renewed restrictions in many provinces in response to a surge in cases associated with the Omicron variant.

The highest level of support for restrictions is with respect to nursing homes, but respondents also indicated widespread agreement with restrictions on international travel, bars and nightclubs and stadiums. Even school and daycare closures received majority support with 66 per cent of Canadians strongly or somewhat agreeing with such measures given the circumstances at the time.



Only the possibility of restrictions on playgrounds, parks and the potential for curfews received less than majority support. This is a marked shift from a year ago, when our data shows that Canadians were more supportive of restrictions on outdoor activities than they are now.



Overall, our findings suggest that Canadians are growing increasingly weary of the pandemic and its management by our political leaders, but are by and large resolved to support the measures being put in place by the federal and provincial governments to try to see us through.

While this may not be the sense that one gets on the streets of Ottawa this week, these results reflect that it is the position of most Canadians.

https://brighterworld.mcmaster.ca/articles/analysis-majority-of-canadians-disagree-with-freedom-convoy-on-vaccine-mandates-and-lockdowns/