(2022-02-16) ZviM Convoy Continued

Zvi Mowshowitz: Convoy Continued. We continue to have ourselves a convoy

• (2022-02-04) ZviM Convoy

We also have some rather startling actions on the part of the Canadian government, which made the ongoing situation impossible to ignore or disentangle.

In tactical terms this was a one-off success that relied on the element of surprise.

Thus, the problem for Ottawa is mostly how to physically remove the trucks.

The border crossings can be blocked by remarkably small numbers of vehicles that can then cause a lot of economic damage, allowing the problem to reassert itself over and over, so they are potentially trickier

As far as I can make out, the concerns about physical difficulties are mostly excuses. The real problem is that if one started physically removing the trucks some of those in the convoy might get violent. If things did turn violent, people could die, which is both inherently worth avoiding and also could cause further trouble.

What Is The Convoy Like? What Do They Want?

There have been a lot of arguments about this question.

This report from The Line seems like one of the more reliable ones from what I can tell. It makes a bold claim, that while most of the protesters are nothing unusual, there is a core group that is a much bigger threat

during the daytime, it’s something of a festival atmosphere along Wellington. At night, it is more grim and much more tense, but I still had no concerns or issues walking through the entire area. This encampment near the stadium? That was something else.

seems to offer a logistical solution. The encampment near the stadium is not blocking anyone’s access to anything important. That’s why the police moved people there in the first place. If that’s where the real problem is, one could isolate the compound without attempting to break it up while you dismantled the main operation in Wellington,

I agree that the bridges need to be handled first

Those in the convoy have been attempting to raise money. There are people who want to give them money. Authorities do not want the money getting to the convoy

An Online Meeting

Yes, the whole thing is pretty funny, but it is a poor atom blaster that won’t point both ways. Is it going to be funny in reverse?

I’d also note that the ‘none of us know how to use the Bitcoin’ is not going to be true for much longer, but also I saw discussions of how people propose bitcoin be used securely in this spot and none of it is remotely reasonable in practice if the people involved do not already have secure wallets they know how to use

Then again, bitcoin has been proven very traceable and seems like… not a great choice?

Official Response

Any operations initially planned for Ottawa got redirected to Windsor to first reopen the Ambassador Bridge, because there was no choice in the matter.

Threats of going after drivers’ licences and seizing vehicles are also intended to convince those who may be wondering if they’ve made a terrible mistake that it’s time to pack up and head home while they still can.

Which all seems to me like reasonable and proportional. If you use your vehicle in such a fashion, it seems tough but fair to threaten to seize the vehicle. If you drive in ways that cause major disruptions, taking away your license also seems tough but fair

Police in Windsor, Ontario, said earlier in the day that more than two dozen people had been peacefully arrested, seven vehicles towed and five seized

That’s the ‘end of democracy’ some people are talking about, two dozen arrests by armed personnel along with twelve vehicles, which were sufficient to block a bridge and cause billions in damage?

Then the Emergencies Act was invoked, like father like son, federalizing the whole problem

We can’t explain why they were able to dig in in the first place.

I definitely am confused why all of that required the invoking of something called the emergencies act

It seems like the answer is that this is about money. In particular, it is about not only demanding that crowdfunding sites report on their own customers the way banks do and treat the protests as ‘terrorists’ it is about cutting off anyone involved from the entire financial system

What. The. Hell?

Tyler Cowen’s link merely called this “A Blow to the Canadian Rule of Law.” It definitely is that.

It also seems like an unforced error – unless, that is, such folks want to destroy rule of law.

Presumably the reason this is going down this way is that, like many with power and authority these days, those trying to stop this can only think in symbolic terms.

They don’t know how to engage with the physical world. They don’t think about what it physically takes to remove the trucks, so they use the only tools they do know.

They go after people’s reputations and money. Except that is the opposite of what will lead to a peaceful resolution

When there is a potentially violent situation, that’s when one holds back. Once they start shooting, assuming you have the firepower, you stop holding back. Similarly, if these people were actual terrorists in the sense that anti-terrorist laws intended, presumably they would be facing bigger problems and threats.

You can decide to what extent this constitutes an ‘unpersoning,’ and in turn how close such an action is to death or imprisonment.

What does seem to be happening is that a lot of people are being radicalized by this, feeling that the ‘price of peace’ has been raised and is likely to be raised again.

Meanwhile, future such incidents will be harder to diffuse, and be designed and planned to give those involved options in exactly the ways and situations that lead to people dying.

if a small minority has the power to shut down your country, you need to find a way to stop that.

in addition to withdrawing vaccine mandates in Ontario and Quebec, Canada lowered some of its useless border measures. Probably nothing.