A few thoughts:
1) The people organising this quite clearly have experience and serious training in logistics. You don't get a result like this by just a couple of guys jumping in their cabs and taking off one night.
2) They have let it be known they intend to stay...
and the Ottawa police have indicated they're ready to let them stay. How could they have planned to have a large group of people essentially camping in their truck cabs for weeks or months at a time without preparing extensively to provide for their needs? Ans: those trucks...
we saw rolling down the Trans-Canada with trailers weren't running empty. They were packed with supplies.
3) They are incredibly disciplined on messaging, in a way and with a level of intelligence I've never seen in any demonstration organisers before. They knew...
with precision detail what to expect from provincial, federal and municipal government. They knew what to expect in detail from both media and agitators/counter-protesters, and people planted in the crowds to cause trouble and have a well-coordinated and clearly communicated...
and strictly enforced protocol for dealing with them that absolutely excludes direct personal engagement; as soon as a suspicious presence is identified, the legitimate demonstrators create a cordon around him, a space isolating him, and ONE designated caller contacts the...
member of the Ottawa police dept. assigned as liaison. We saw this work with the guy who was the only person there in a full face covering balaclava carrying the Confederate flag.
4) I'm told that the truckers came prepared with food, communications, medical and other types of...
survival supplies in a manner identical to that used by Canadian peacekeepers in war zones who brought supplies to besieged cities in the Balkans war, among others. This is, in other words, what Canadian military logistics operations looked like in Sarajevo and Mostar...
5) They have "blockaded" the centre of the city of Ottawa, but it hasn't been random. They've done it in close coordination with the Ottawa city police to ensure that there is -1- space for emergency first responder vehicles to continue to operate -2- allowing space for...
very large groups of people on foot to continue to gather and meet and talk and walk together. That is also not accidental.
6) They've made very sure to respond to complaints proactively. When opponents started howling that someone had draped the Terry Fox statue with a flag...
they made sure there was a video of clearly identifiable trucker demonstrators carefully cleaning the statue and that it went viral.
7) They're incredibly precise in their messaging, responding instantly and transparently to accusations without the least sign of apology...
Organizers have at the same time maintained strict communications discipline, not giving interviews to corporate media while remaining visible for people on the ground a personal basis, and carefully choosing their own outlets, cf: interview with @glennbeck ...
8) They got well ahead of any possible efforts to shut them down through the cops, anticipating attacks. The Ottawa city police force is ridiculously tiny, so busloads of reserves have been brought in from Toronto. Then they were standing around with nothing much to do...
So, when the truckers saw that the cops had a ridiculously long walk to use the washroom, they moved portable toilets over for them. Yesterday it came out that someone offered horse hay for the police horses. This was brought in the trucks - so they knew they'd be needing it...
9) All this tells me that -1- this has been meticulously planned by professionally trained experts in logistics, but the kind of training you pretty much can't get from the private sector - the people doing this are ex-military - and -2- they've got a bigger plan than just...
to park a bunch of trucks along Wellington street and #HonkHonk and have a street party for a weekend. They brought enough supplies to be there for weeks. They've set up canteens and services in the streets that have been blocked off. These are people who really know what...
they're doing.
They're only talking to the people they choose to talk to. One of whom was @glennbeck.
"EVERYbody is fed up."
And they don't just mean in Canada...
There is now not the least doubt in my mind that it isn't a coincidence that #freedomconvoy2022 has gone global in the same week.
10) If the trucks are already rolling in Australia, there's NO WAY it was a spur of the moment idea. The Australian summer is every bit as difficult an environment for logistics as the Canadian prairies are in winter. You don't do a thing like this on a moment's notice...
11) Last point is that the memes are key. The whole thing is a kind of prank, and a damn good one. It reminds me of that old university engineer joke of leaving a running VW bug in the dean's office (or as it happened in real life, the time the UBC engineering dept...
suspended a VW Beetle from the Lionsgate bridge in Vancouver.) I think the only country in the world this could have been cooked up is Canada, knowing exactly how it would be taken by the rest of the world. The expressions of amazement that the "placid" "peaceful" Canadians...
have finally cracked and are doing this frankly hilarious response, that has filled the world with hope, like a beam of sunlight bursting through the smokes of Mordor, IS EXACTLY THE MESSAGE. "The Canadians of all people" are actually the only people in the world who ...
have it so deeply embedded in their national character to laugh at themselves, and their leaders, AND their own suffering that they could turn back the glooms of hell with laughter. The Memes are a massively important part of the demonstration - and a lot of people are ...
realising that the dark nightmare they've been in - the deep sense of despair that has been enslaving the WHOLE WORLD for two years, has suddenly started to lift. We are waking from a nightmare and remembering that the world is good. That people are strong and free...
that the grim misery of the Upside Down is not the world we have been given by God, and we don't have to live in it. We can just say no. We are already free.
Hi, @threadreaderapp, unroll please.