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The stupidity of the anti-vaxx nutcases

spring-peeper said:
Yes, there were consequences.

www.trucknews.com

MTO grounds trucking businesses involved in 'Freedom Convoy' protests - Truck News

The Ontario Ministry of Transportation has effectively shut down 39 trucking businesses in the wake of a crackdown on so-called Freedom Convoy protesters.
www.trucknews.com www.trucknews.com
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Would be interested to know if there's any breakdown of who was involved in the "trucker" protests as just regular employees of trucking companies, vs actual business owners (or indeed people not actually in the industry at all) - this sounds more like the latter? I would have guessed that it'd be in the interests of trucking company owners rather than workers to just try and keep things calm and get everyone back to work as quickly as possible, but I suppose trucking bosses are as capable as anyone else of acting in confusing and irrational ways.
 
hitmouse said:
Would be interested to know if there's any breakdown of who was involved in the "trucker" protests as just regular employees of trucking companies, vs actual business owners (or indeed people not actually in the industry at all) - this sounds more like the latter? I would have guessed that it'd be in the interests of trucking company owners rather than workers to just try and keep things calm and get everyone back to work as quickly as possible, but I suppose trucking bosses are as capable as anyone else of acting in confusing and irrational ways.
Click to expand...

A group compiled a list of trucks here, but it's not clear how many are owner-operators:

Convoy Traitors

Documenting the Ottawa occupation.
convoytraitors.ca convoytraitors.ca

Police say the occupation involved around 400 trucks - plus pickups, etc. If there was one trucker per truck, that means around 0.1% of Canada's estimated 324,000 truckers took part in the protest.
 
Yossarian said:
A group compiled a list of trucks here, but it's not clear how many are owner-operators:

Convoy Traitors

Documenting the Ottawa occupation.
convoytraitors.ca convoytraitors.ca

Police say the occupation involved around 400 trucks - plus pickups, etc. If there was one trucker per truck, that means around 0.1% of Canada's estimated 324,000 truckers took part in the protest.
Click to expand...
AFD-Transport.png

AFD Transport is presumably just a coincidence since this is Canada not Germany, but quite a funny one.
Fwiw, in terms of how this thing could benefit trucking business owners, this trot article had a bit of analysis on the subject:
marxist.ca

‘Freedom Convoy’—a warning to the labour movement

The so-called Freedom Convoy has dominated headlines for the past few weeks and has been blockading the downtown core around Parliament Hill in Ottawa for a week. While the numbers in the blockade have thinned, there are no signs that they intend to leave anytime soon and many have vowed to stay...
marxist.ca marxist.ca
The mishandling of the pandemic, and above all the absence of a left-wing response, created a perfect storm for the merging of anti-vax sentiments, the far right, and the owners of transport companies and truckers angry at the federal vaccine mandate.

This perfect storm also explains why so many people support the convoy. The establishment political parties are responsible for the mishandling of the pandemic and are despised. People are angry and looking for an outlet and a way out of the situation. With no leadership from the left and the unions, certain layers are being channeled towards the anti-establishment right. This is because there is no other alternative available. There is no mass anti-establishment left. The specific features are different, but the “Freedom Convoy” and the growth of the PPC are a reflection of the same process that led to the rise of Trump in the United States.

Trucking is a dangerous job with long hours and low pay. The pandemic has wreaked havoc on supply chains and rising inflation is making it more difficult for truckers to make ends meet. But nobody is talking about the real issues for workers in the trucking industry. The federal vaccine mandate was the straw that broke the camel’s back for a certain layer of truckers already sympathetic to anti-vax views. Now the owners of the trucking industry dominate and have captured this mood of anger, as some truckers have come to believe that what is good for the boss is good for them. This is why the convoy is really a vehicle to defend the interests of the owners of trucking companies.

The vast majority of truckers in Canada are fully vaccinated. The federal mandate will not pose a problem for them. The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) estimates, however, that the mandate will affect some 12,000 to 16,000 truckers, about 10 to 15 per cent of all commercial drivers who cross the Canada-US border. The leaders of the convoy are using the convoy for their own cynical purposes. They blame the mandate for the shortage of drivers, supply chain issues and inflation. In reality, it is well known that understaffing has been a major problem in the trucking industry for a long time, largely due to low pay and poor working conditions in the industry.

In the case of working class truckers on the convoy, the vacuum on the left has meant that the initiative passed to the owners of the trucking industry allied with the anti-vaxxers and the far right. The alliance of the trucking companies owners and the far right anti-vax movement leading the convoy has managed to convince a layer of truckers that the biggest problem they face is the federal vaccine mandate for cross-border travel, rather than the issues of safety, wages and working conditions. As one truck driver recently said about the convoy, “It is very, very alarming, I must say, when you have the eyes and ears of everybody, not only in Canada, but around the world, looking at what’s happening in Ottawa [and] we are not talking about the real issues.”
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I mean, as ever the disclaimer that I am not a Canadian trucker applies here, but that sounds like a fairly plausible bit of analysis to me?
 
So people in charge of massive heavy vehicles that don’t believe in public safety have their big heavy vehicles taken away from them. Not sure I see the downside of this.

It’s like Biden‘s public worker mandate in the US that lead to a load of right-wing racist and idiot cops losing their jobs. Lossless.
 
Yossarian said:
A group compiled a list of trucks here, but it's not clear how many are owner-operators:

Convoy Traitors

Documenting the Ottawa occupation.
convoytraitors.ca convoytraitors.ca

Police say the occupation involved around 400 trucks - plus pickups, etc. If there was one trucker per truck, that means around 0.1% of Canada's estimated 324,000 truckers took part in the protest.
Click to expand...
By the way, a name I've mentioned a few times in discussions of Canadian trucker stuff is Naujawan Support Network - they're not a trucker-specific group, just a group organising among Indian/South Asian migrants in Canada, but there's a lot of South Asian truckers so there's a considerable overlap there:
www.instagram.com

Naujawan Support Network (@naujawansupportnetwork) • Instagram photos and videos

21K Followers, 217 Following, 320 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Naujawan Support Network (@naujawansupportnetwork)
www.instagram.com www.instagram.com

Some recent stuff they've been posting about includes:







So seems like there are some Canadian truckers who are more concerned with stuff like whether they get their wages paid on time than the vaccine mandate. I appreciate I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but you'd never guess that from some of the coverage elsewhere.
 
hitmouse said:
So seems like there are some Canadian truckers who are more concerned with stuff like whether they get their wages paid on time than the vaccine mandate. I appreciate I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but you'd never guess that from some of the coverage elsewhere.
Click to expand...

Actually, I remember reading at least one or two news articles from Canadian sources which mentioned high vaccination rates among Canadian truckers in general, clearly an attempt to put across the idea that the convoy twats were among a definite minority.
 
I walked past city hall today to see if there was any gathering in solidarity with Ukraine - instead, there were a few dozen antivax clowns shouting "Freedom" and holding signs up at passing cars. I walked through the group wearing a mask to see if anybody would say anything and was a little surprised that nobody did, maybe they thought I was a cop.

The vaccine mandate for restaurants etc. ends Monday - I think the main reason these people are still protesting is because they like spending time in a social group where nobody's going to call stupid.

20220226_152742-01.jpeg
 
Yossarian said:
The vaccine mandate for restaurants etc. ends Monday - I think the main reason these people are still protesting is because they like spending time in a social group where nobody's going to call stupid.
Click to expand...

things are winding down here too - NYC public schools ending outdoor mask requirements monday, the US CDC relaxing mandates cross the board. yet just the week before last i tore a good half-dozen new antivaxx stickers off lightpoles, and yesterday coming home from work i puled another half dozen away calling for a demo outside the governor's office, demanding ... removing public school mask mandates. what kind of pretzel-logical bullshit will they claim when the mandates are removed entirely?
 
petee said:
things are winding down here too - NYC public schools ending outdoor mask requirements monday, the US CDC relaxing mandates cross the board. yet just the week before last i tore a good half-dozen new antivaxx stickers off lightpoles, and yesterday coming home from work i puled another half dozen away calling for a demo outside the governor's office, demanding ... removing public school mask mandates. what kind of pretzel-logical bullshit will they claim when the mandates are removed entirely?
Click to expand...
they will claim it is all because of them, and find some other windmill to fight.
 
petee said:
things are winding down here too - NYC public schools ending outdoor mask requirements monday, the US CDC relaxing mandates cross the board. yet just the week before last i tore a good half-dozen new antivaxx stickers off lightpoles, and yesterday coming home from work i puled another half dozen away calling for a demo outside the governor's office, demanding ... removing public school mask mandates. what kind of pretzel-logical bullshit will they claim when the mandates are removed entirely?
Click to expand...
That it's fake MSM news.
 
every now and then I stumble into anti-vaxx twitter... basically anyone who dies under the age of 50 - it's because of the vaccine. and of course there are now websites that write it up as fact, which these morons can share. what a great internet we have. Jamal Edwards seems to be the latest example of someone 100% definitely killed by the vaccine.
 
pbsmooth said:
every now and then I stumble into anti-vaxx twitter... basically anyone who dies under the age of 50 - it's because of the vaccine. and of course there are now websites that write it up as fact, which these morons can share. what a great internet we have. Jamal Edwards seems to be the latest example of someone 100% definitely killed by the vaccine.
Click to expand...
Yup, infuriating, people doing it with Skibadee too, shows their scummy level :mad:
 
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