After changing up the plan and overcoming a brief delay yesterday, ‘The People’s Convoy’ began their protest in the Nation’s Capital on Sunday.
The 70+ mile-long caravan departed from the speedway in Hagerstown, Maryland in the morning, arriving a short while later to the DC Beltway.
Take a look at the line of trucks before they headed out this morning – it’s absolutely astonishing!
Organizer Brian Brase explained that the convoy’s plan was to drive slowly around the 63-mile highway, that encircles the Capital, two times before heading back to the current staging area at the Hagerstown Speedway.
The group will continue this daily until their demands are met, Brase told the Washington Post.
“Sunday ‘is a show of just how big we are and just how serious we are,’ the convoy organizer said. He said the group wants an immediate end to the national emergency declaration in response to the virus pandemic more than two years ago.
‘We’re going to be a huge pain,’ Brase said. He noted that other convoys are en route and will join them.
‘We’re trying to work with our local law enforcement communities because we want them to understand that we are law-abiding citizens that are just exercising our rights to this protest,’ he said. But ‘every day is going to elevate what we do.’
‘We want to show the American people how large we are.’ Brase said. ‘And we want to show our congressional leaders that we’re serious and we are here to negotiate. We are here to talk. We are law-abiding. We are peaceful. We don’t want to shut anything down, and we’re not coming downtown.’
Major and minor delays were reported throughout the day on the DC Beltway as the brigade of vehicles carried out the first of many demonstrations.
Take a look:
Once again, the truckers were greeted by large groups who made camp on highway overpasses to cheer them on as they protested.
Americans have the truckers’ backs. Groups like this have been a common sight on the convoy’s cross-country journey, showing up everywhere they go.
Also making an appearance on the route were hundreds of law enforcement officers, who could be seen littered throughout the Beltway in anticipation of the trucker’s arrival.
Thankfully, there have been no reports of them engaging with any of the protest participants as of yet.
The heavy police presence was one of the main contributors in deciding to postpone yesterday’s demonstration until today. Some of the convoy’s organizers had traveled into DC hours before the group’s scheduled arrival on Saturday and saw scores of law enforcement officers in position, waiting for them to arrive.
Out of an abundance of caution, and some other factors, the organizers decided to hold off until today.
Despite the one-day delay, the first day of protests went off without a hitch and the convoy made its way back to the Hagerstown Speedway for the night. The group will hold another rally tonight in anticipation of tomorrow’s demonstration.
Tomorrow’s Monday, after all. So traffic on the Beltway will be substantially worse – plus Biden will be back from his weekend bunker hideaway in his Delaware basement.
In other words, it’s a big day.
In order to make things easier going forward and cut down on the back and forth travel, organizers have said that they are currently working on a staging area that’s much closer to the DC Beltway – possibly within just a couple of miles.
Once that happens, the convoy should be able to take a stand rivaling the one in Ottawa a few weeks back. Either way, they have made clear that they aren’t going anywhere until changes are made and the Constitution is restored.
People of goodwill should be thinking about how to let Russia and Ukraine both save face, end the war, and reach an agreement that accommodates each side’s core interests.
Much of the European world is lining up to oppose Russia’s war with Ukraine. Very quickly, support for Ukraine has also become an unquestioned article of faith in American politics. Patriotism now apparently also requires support for any degree of sanction, military aid, or other measure that the United States and NATO can take against Russia. Hope for peace, worries about unintended consequences, or a general aversion to getting into conflicts halfway around the world are now dissident beliefs.
Being a history buff, the intensity of Putin and Russia’s demonization strikes me as overwrought propaganda. The war is arguably unjust and disproportionate, and the Ukrainians are,at least at the moment, highly sympathetic, and their spirit of resistance is inspiring. But, by any historical standard, the scale, casualties, and degree of destruction from this war has been modest. Also, the causes of the war, including the Maidan revolution and theconduct of the war against the separatist Donbas, reveal less than exemplary displays of Ukraine’s democratic bona fides.
War: Dispute Resolution or Law Enforcement?
As Clausewitz taught us, “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” And wars are something states do pretty regularly. There is a reason every nation has a military, and its use as an instrument of policy long predates Hitler and the Nazis, which seems to be theonly history anyone knows.
Wars often arise from irreconcilable claims to the same piece of territory or mutually hostile beliefs about identity and history. The phrase “arbitration of arms” comes to mind, which exemplifies war’s function as a means of resolving serious disputes. It’s hard to take seriously characterizations of the Russia-Ukraine War as the actions of anirrational madman, unless one would classify all of the European Wars stretching back to the early modern era as such.
Americans and Europeans are accustomed to the current order, including multinational institutions like the U.N. and the European Union. These all suggest rationality, permanence, legality, and the use of diplomacy over warfare. Under this model, wars should be akin to law enforcement, with the United States and its allies deciding who the aggressors are. While it’s obvious why U.S. elites favor this approach, it’s also obvious why other nations view it as a serious threat to their own sovereignty and independence.
President George H. W. Bush sold this as the “New World Order” in response to Iraqi aggression against Kuwait. This expansive notion of national security later led to the “humanitarian war” in Kosovo and “expanding democracy” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.
This self-appointment of the U.S. foreign policy establishment as the global arbiters of foreign policy morality has also led to ludicrous results in some cases, as in America’s support for theSaudi war in Yemen.
NATO and the New World Order
Far from a mere defensive alliance, in recent years NATO servedto augment America’s “sole superpower” status by reducing the need for Western Europe to arm itself, as they benefited from America’s large conventional and nuclear arsenal. NATO was also the platform used to wage offensive wars in Kosovo and Libya, after the U.N. demurred.
NATO wouldn’t agree with this characterization of its actions; for NATO, these were wars of liberation aimed at vindicating important, objective interests of the “international community.” We are supposed to forget here that every combatant in every war from time immemorial believes he ison the side of angels.
The Russia-Ukraine war is rapidlybeginning to pollute our domestic life. Like “freedom fries” and other Manichean rhetoric on the eve of the Iraq War, no one is allowed to be neutral. The United States and NATO are demanding that every nation line up against Russia, and they are demanding their citizens adopt similar unanimity, evenunder threat of imprisonment.
Because an alliance-centered approach to war threatens to escalate the Russia-Ukraine conflict into a world war, we should look to history to find alternate approaches, not merely the overused example of appeasement at Munich in 1938.
Consider, as two alternative outcomes, the two wars in which France and Germany fought one another: in 1870 and 1914.
Two Types of Wars
In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, after years of tension between France and its rising, militarist neighbor, Germany defeated France in a swift campaign. Even though France declared war and mobilized its forces first, France’s armies in the field were poorly led and were either quickly defeated or surrendered en masse. When the war was over, the French Second Empire had been replaced by a republic, and France endured a brief and brutal internal conflict over the Paris Commune. Ultimately, France agreed to pay massive reparations and give up most of the territories of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany. This created a seething irredentism among the French, particularly itsarmy, which vowed to reconquer the lost territories.
The only combatants in that war were France and the confederated states of Germany, acting under Prussian leadership. England, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia, and the rest of Europe stayed out of it. It was a bilateral squabble over disputed borderlands, fueled by the inherent tension between a rising Germany and a more mature, not-quite-modernizing France.
Like any war, there were competing arguments about who was at fault, civilians and soldiers suffered, and it imposed a significant cost on the French. But this did not lead European powers to declare either France or Germany the evil aggressor, whose transgression mandated a unified response from every neighboring nation.
There are degrees of evil and degrees of necessity. The Franco-Prussian War did not turn into a continent-wide conflagration like the earlier Napoleonic Wars or the Thirty Years War because all of the other major powers remained neutral. Generally, the century following the Napoleonic Wars has been correctly described as a time of industrial development, nationalism, modernization, competition, but, above all, a time of peace.
In contrast, World War I also involved France and Germany, but, unlike the Franco-Prussian War, it drew in the rest of Europe and eventually the United States. The inherently massive empires were augmented by hair-trigger alliances—France with Russia, Germany with the Austrians, the Ottoman Empire with Germany, and England with France.
In combination, these alliances allowed a relatively small spark in the Balkans, directly implicating only Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to metastasize into a conflict that became a true world war, costing millions of lives. TheConcert of Europe system that allowed firewalls around conflicts had devolved into one where nothing—not even alimited punitive war following a terrorist assassination of the heir to the throne—could be left solely to the belligerents.
Alliances and Security
Today’s structures have more in common with the conditions immediately preceding World War I than the earlier balance of powers regime. Defenders say that multilateralism and alliances secure peace by offering small countries, otherwise easily bullied by powerful neighbors, protection by an alliance structure that renders them powerful when joined together—NATO being the prime example of such an alliance system with teeth.
Of course, this also makes such an alliance particularly threatening to those outside the club. Alliances guarantee that any war involving any members of the alliance will assume a much larger scale than if each were left to its own devices. More important, as we see now in Ukraine, attempts to expand an alliance can be interpreted as mortal threats by opposing states.
In other words, it is not clear that alliances, including NATO, serve the cause of world peace. The bilateral NATO and Warsaw Pact alliances of the Cold War are usually touted as the preeminent example, but there is an important confounding factor in this precedent: During the Cold War, both sides had large nuclear powers on each side, and these nuclear powers have assiduously avoided direct conflict since that weapon’s development.
In the current conflict in Ukraine, if NATO were to get involved directly, it would pit the United States and other nuclear powers like France and Great Britain against a nuclear-armed Russia. Such a conflict would further join China and Russia together, as each views the United States as a hostile power. Needless to say, coupled with Putin’s obvious appetite for risk, this radically increases the danger of a global nuclear war, even though no one directly intends that outcome.
As with domestic policy, mere good intentions are not enough in foreign policy. A statesman is also accountable for the foreseeable consequences of his policies. A poorly considered policy that ignores obvious and predictable risks—an insurgency in Iraq, mass refugee flows following the removal of Gaddafi in Libya, nuclear war risk arising from a conventional conflict with Russia—cannot be redeemed by purity of intention, even if such purity were extant.
One important feature of the Concert of Europe era missing today was a hard-headed appraisal of interests, widespread understanding of the balance of power, and a mutual commitment to prevent small wars from becoming larger ones. Even during the Cold War, policymakers and the public had comparatively more sophistication and awareness that a nuclear war was a risk of such magnitude that direct confrontations between the Soviet Union and NATO had to be avoided, even after acts of Soviet aggression in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
We now live in a world where our leaders inventcartoonish villains andtalk in sentence fragments that don’t even qualify as “sound bites.” People of goodwill should instead be thinking about a means to let Russia and Ukraine both save face, end the war, and reach an agreement that accommodates each side’s core interests: Ukraine’s insistence on its independence and sovereignty and Russia’s entirely predictable fears of an encroaching NATO alliance and concern for ethnic Russians in its near-abroad.
Dr. Andrew Hill, MD, is a senior visiting Research Fellow in the Pharmacology Department at Liverpool University.
Dr. Hill graduated from Oxford University, and attained his PhD from Amsterdam University. Dr. Hill has worked in the scientific and medical fields for more than three decades, with a specific expertise in the field of developing antiretrovirals.
Dr. Hill is considered one of the world’s preeminent experts, and it was because of his specific skillset that in October of 2020, Dr. Andrew Hill was tasked to report to the World Health Organization on the dozens of new studies from around the world suggesting that Ivermectin could be a remarkably safe and effective treatment for COVID-19.
However, as a medical scientist, Dr. Hill also held several financial conflicts within his research. He received funding for his work from the same industry institutions who would benefit financially from a vaccination protocol. One organization was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who funded Unitaid, the organization Dr. Hill admits had influence over his final determinations.
On January 18, 2021, Dr. Hill completed his contracted review and published his findings. Dr. Hill advised that “Ivermectin should be validated in larger appropriately controlled randomized trials before the results are sufficient for review by regulatory authorities.” His decision gave the medical research community the space to claim Ivermectin was ineffective, and thus the Big Rx vaccination protocol was affirmed.
In this video, the single most influential person in the anti-Ivermectin narrative, Dr. Andrew Hill, admits to knowingly shaping his findings based on institutional influence and withholding information about the efficacy of Ivermectin while millions of people were dying. This video is absolutely stunning. WATCH:
The first white horse, pestilence (virus); the second red horse, war (Ukraine); the third black horse, famine (fertilizer shortage); and the final horse, death.
Stunningly, in this monologue Mark Steyn takes a tour reminding viewers of the past two years of western government action, while connecting the corporate mandates from the World Economic Forum. That outline is brave considering the mention of the totalitarian shift amid New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Europe, and the United States when attached to the WEF is normally a third rail of discussion.
However, Steyn doesn’t stop at pointing out the hypocrisy of the collective west in their current drumbeat against Vladimir Putin; instead, he takes the last few years, puts in a deep breath, and then connects it… to the world’s most popular history book. WATCH:
What I will say about this, I said last night… and I repeat it here for emphasis:
“If Joe Biden, NATO, the EU, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Word Economic Forum and the multinational corporations in this alliance of Public/Private geopolitical partnerships, succeed in the fight against Vladimir Putin – I promise you, we are not going to like the world on the other side of their victory.”
With every fiber of my being, I mean that sincerely.
The global elite, the people and systems previously called the ‘New World Order‘, have taken a zero-sum position in this situation with Russia and Ukraine. The construct of their approach is purposeful, intentional and provides no alternate options. One side will win everything, the other side will be left with NOTHING.
On the globalist side, there is no one asking the question: at what cost, do we want to win?
What we are seeing is a full-blown alignment of interests between globalist government and their partnered multinational corporations and financial institutions.
This is not a good thing to witness regardless of the outcome in Ukraine.
Think about the direct message and the implications here. Think about the world of multinational corporate compliance and how they will kneel to the dictates of political power in the aftermath of this current enterprise.
If this collective group of multinationals and government interests succeed in this approach, everything will change.
If you think corporations, Big Tech and Big Banks, et al, are controlling and politically motivated now? Good grief, just wait.
The global future being outlined in this NATO/EU/WEF strategy to use private industry as a weapon, is like the government attack on Canadian truckers/supporters taken to an exponential scale.
Now, overlay your pending requirement to walk around with a digital identity, and you can see exactly how easy it will be to de-person, which is one layer higher than de-bank.
I mean seriously, think about this approach toward Vladimir Putin. What I just described above is our future if the globalists defeat Putin. Another question to ask yourself is – what happens if Putin wins?
How does the international assembly of government approach Russia in the aftermath? A G20 summit? Ha!
What do you think Putin and his allies like China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and possibly India, South Africa, Brazil will do now?
What globalist Rubicons are being crossed right now that can never be reversed?
The dollar lost as a global trade currency. The end of the petro-dollar?
These are very real possibilities, perhaps even probabilities now.
Another good reflective and contemplative monologue from Neil Oliver today, as he notes the quick shift from ‘you cannot question the vaccine’ to ‘you cannot question what’s going on in Ukraine.’
Indeed, the analogous pivot by global governance was so fast, we didn’t even feel ourselves get shoved through the media looking glass. They’re getting good at this now; the global crew have had a lot more practice in the past two years. They’re like the performer who can snatch the tablecloth from under the plates without moving the cutlery.
However, as Neil Oliver mentions, sorry team NATO or global alliance or whoever the f**k you are, our experience with your abusive reaction to us in the past two years has thickened the callouses of our sensibility. We are not going to stop asking questions and looking for the real images behind the opaque narrative you present. Ukraine may, or may not, be all you say, but for the past two years you have manipulated so much we won’t stop asking questions, and we certainly will not accept the media presentations at face value. WATCH:
I said the other day that the war between Russian and Ukraine is an example of war in the social media age. So it isn’t entirely surprising that it’s our first war in the age of online pressure campaigns since online pressure campaigns are a natural by-product of the social media age.
It’s been fascinating to watch the vapid narcissism of online pressure campaigns being deployed in response to war.
The same breathless dipshits who campaign to get a university to fire a professor for saying something counter to approved thought are now trying to get Russians living in the west fired from their jobs for not condemning Vladimir Putin.
The same hysterics who badger companies to pull their advertising from Fox News are now badgering companies to pull their businesses out of Russia.
And because the people who participate in online pressure campaigns are narcissists with a very narrow view of the world, it doesn’t occur to them that it’s insane to deploy against Russia the same tactics they use against, say, a celebrity who says women don’t have penises.
Yes, my friends, online pressure campaigns have found a new battleground and it’s the oldest battleground in human history.
Take a look at this:
I bet you ten bucks every one of those corporations was also pressured into releasing a statement in support of Black Lives Matter during the 2020 BLM riots.
And now, any corporation that won’t cut ties with Russia is being hectored and badgered by the same people who demand corporations stop advertising during Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Hashtags like #BoycottMcDonalds and #BoycottPepsi are trending on Twitter as the usual dopes demand that these companies bend to their wishes.
And as with every online pressure campaign, the media and politicians are jumping on the pig-pile.
Yesterday, Reuters published a piece suggesting that all “major global brands” pause their operations in Russia.
The Reuters article notes that New York State’s Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli has sent letters to companies urging them “to review their business in Russia because they face ‘significant and growing legal, compliance, operational, human rights and personnel, and reputational risks.’”
It was reported yesterday that Russian soprano Anna Netrebko will not be performing this year at the Met because she won’t “repudiate” Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Netrebko has expressed her opposition to the war in Ukraine which she described as a “senseless war of aggression.”
But that isn’t enough. She must denounce Vladimir Putin.
See, it’s easy for us to “repudiate” Vladimir Putin because we don’t have family in Russia whose lives might be made extremely difficult by what we say.
A famous opera singer from Italy can repudiate Putin to her heart’s content without fear of putting a target on the back of her family.
This is what these gormless dopes don’t understand.
Their threats pale in comparison to what Vladimir Putin could do to this opera singer’s family.
And shame on the Met for caving.
But you know what’s worse? The Met is using the same virtue-signaling bullshit in response to this pressure campaign that got used during the BLM riots. In short, they’ve hired a Ukrainian singer to replace the Russian Netrebko.
See what I mean?
It is utterly fascinating the way these people treat an actual global cataclysm like a war in the same way they treat every other outrage du jour.
Russian athletes are getting kicked out of sporting events – including the Paralympics in Beijing.
Yeah, they’re punishing disabled Russians for Putin invading Ukraine.
Isn’t it ironic that the Paralympics is barring Russian athletes from games being held in friggin’ Beijing, China? Talk about a lack of self-awareness.
But wait! There’s more!
They’re also punishing Russian cats for shit’s sake.
I’m not kidding about that. The Federation Internationale Feline announced on Thursday that Russian cats will be banned from all competition until June at the earliest.
“The Board of FIFe feels it cannot just witness these atrocities and do nothing,” the Federation’s statement said.
Was Ukraine invaded by a herd of Russian cats?!
Sweet merciful Zeus.
Actress Patricia Arquette tried to start another online pressure campaign yesterday, namely to get Russia kicked out of … wait for it … NATO.
Yeah. She’s that stupid.
It took her hours to delete that idiotic tweet. But I managed to capture it before she did.
What is amazing to me is how many people in the replies were totally on board with Patty’s call to remove Russia from the treaty organization set up to defend Western Europe … from Russia.
Great goobly-moobly, these people are retarded.
Dave Reaboi is right. It is a moral panic – the same way COVID and January 6 became moral panics.
Two years ago, people who questioned the sanity of shutting down the entire US economy over a virus were accused of wanting to kill grandma.
If you say the January 6 riot was stupid and foolish but it wasn’t an “Insurrection,” you’re accused of being a seditionist who is trying to destroy democracy.
During a moral panic, there can be no moderation or rational thought.
Now, thanks to this coordinated online pressure campaign being bolstered by the corporate news media and politicians from both parties, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released yesterday shows 74% of respondents want the US and NATO to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
The poll itself is a pressure campaign and Reuters admits it in that article:
That puts pressure on U.S. President Joe Biden to take more aggressive actions against Moscow, although he has dismissed the notion of no-fly zones because of the risk of open conflict between NATO and Russian forces.
Do the 74% of respondents in favor of this madness think a no-fly zone consists of a magical forcefield beamed over Ukraine?
Do they not realize how a no-fly zone is enforced?
I’m curious to know how Reuters/Ipsos worded the question here.
Truth is, I highly doubt respondents were told that a no-fly zone would require US and NATO forces to shoot down Russian aircraft that violate the no-fly zone, effectively pulling us into a direct shooting war with a nuclear power.
If I had to guess, I’d say 64% of that 74% don’t know that. And if Reuters/Ipsos made it clear, that number would drop precipitously.
But thanks to a coordinated, weeklong pressure campaign calling for a no-fly zone, 74% of respondents stupidly support it.
It’s also wise to keep in mind that there is an agitprop carpet-bombing campaign being waged by both pro-Ukraine and pro-Russia elements.
Writer David Reaboi, who wrote a book on Qatar’s information warfare, delves into the Russia/Ukraine information warfare in his latest Substack column, “Ukraine and the NGO Archipelago.” It is an outstanding read, and I highly recommend it.
You might ask yourself why would the American corporate media want to “pressure” the Biden administration into establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine? Surely they know it would result in a war between NATO and the Russian Federation.
Oh, they know. They just don’t care.
America getting dragged into another World War makes for excellent ratings.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, CNN was drawing over a million viewers a night to its primetime shows for the first time in months.
Imagine how much of a ratings boost CNN would get if war broke out between Russia and the United States.
Think that’s cynical?
This is the same cable network that was so thrilled at their bump in ratings during the Capitol riot, that one year later they had wall-to-wall coverage of the Democrats’ January 6 anniversary campaign event.
These are the guys that cheered the destruction of the US economy over a virus with a 99% survival rate just to get rid of a president they hated. Do you think the prospect of hundreds of Americans coming home in body bags gives them pause? Oh, honey. They love the idea because war is ratings gold.
But you know what worries me most about these online pressure campaigns that are happening right now?
The White House.
The Biden administration has a proven track record of caving to online pressure.
This has been a social media-driven administration from the get-go which is why so much of the garbage they are pushing, while popular on Twitter, really has no actual support out here in the real world.
I don’t doubt for a moment that Biden would announce a no-fly zone over Ukraine because of this coordinated, all-hands-on-deck pressure campaign.
This is the same administration that fell for the online pressure campaign calling for border patrol officers on horseback to be “investigated” and “fired” for “whipping” Haitian illegals.
It was an obvious lie. But administration officials from Alejandro Mayorkas to Kamala Harris to the President himself bought it hook, line, and sinker.
These guys are so plugged into the Outrage Machine on Twitter, it controls White House policy like a tail wagging a dog.
And, frankly, that scares the shit of me right now.
Dr. Andrew Hill, MD, is a senior visiting Research Fellow in the Pharmacology Department at Liverpool University.
What we are seeing is a full-blown alignment of interests between globalist government and their partnered multinational corporations and financial institutions.
