Mounties said in a release Monday that they became aware of a small organized group within the larger protest at Coutts.
They say they had information that the group had access to a cache of firearms and ammunition. Officers seized long guns, handguns, multiple sets of body armour, a machete, a large quantity of ammunition and high-capacity firearm magazines.
That's fair, yes. Economically disruptive, but largely peaceful.
I'd wager the left isn't going to pass "it's legal to run over protesters" in response to these, though. https://www.vox.com/2021/4/25/22367019/gop-laws-oklahoma-iow...
Protests and blockade are one thing, continuous noise in areas where people live and work is not peaceful .
[1] https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CAT/Shared%20Documents...
[2] https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/yes-sleep-deprivation-is-tor...
Our media entertained a serious debate about whether looting or burning a neighborhood to the ground was "violence" or not, and the many preferred to refer to these events as "fiery but mostly peaceful protests". How did we go from that to tenuous analogies of torture?
> Under the new law, an Oklahoma driver will no longer be liable for striking — or even killing — a person if the driver is “fleeing from a riot ... under a reasonable belief that fleeing was necessary to protect the motor vehicle operator from serious injury or death.”
Super disingenuous to characterize that as "it's legal to run over protesters".
That said, per my previous comment, there may be lots to criticize about this law, including that it may have been superfluous. I’m not a lawyer, but my best guess is that existing self-defense law didn’t clearly absolve the victim of injury or death to bystanders as she pursued her own safety. But again, none of that has anything to do with what’s going on in Canada.
I don't think it's reasonable to defend yourself from somebody by going up to a passer by and shooting them
Agreed. This is one of many reasons why rioting is awful—it creates these dangerous scenarios where ordinary people have to make split second life-or-death decisions. Frankly, I wish rioting was prosecuted more aggressively rather than blaming people who are stuck in situations where they have to defend themselves (“but they don’t need to be there!” <- people have the right to assemble in public, but rioters don’t have the right to create dangerous situations).
> I don't think it's reasonable to defend yourself from somebody by going up to a passer by and shooting them
This is an embarrassingly obvious straw man. No one is arguing for the right to kill a third party to defend oneself against another, the argument is that people should be given a pass if they accidentally hit someone while fleeing for their life. It’s one thing to disagree with that, but it’s an entirely different thing to lie about the law or the argument.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-police-arson-in...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/coutts-protest-blocka...
As for the police - helps that a lot of them were tacitly helping the rioters. As usual, giving them fuel and supplies, and ignoring clear-cut violations of the law. Why throw rocks at an ally?
Toronto and other cities may have shut them down, but the Ottawa cops were pretty much assisting. Not really a surprise, cops are pretty right-wing aligned in general.
> Police have not confirmed any link between their investigation into this incident and the ongoing convoy protest.
Anyway, there's a pretty considerable difference between whatever this was and the images of burned down neighborhoods in the US.
https://www.google.com/search?q=kenosha+aftermath&client=saf...
...
Police have not confirmed any link between their investigation into this incident and the ongoing convoy protest.
> There will always be some opportunistic groups looking to cause more mayhem in chaotic situations like this. These protests have been literally “mostly peaceful” no?
Exactly. Didn't "Bugaloo Bois" try to hijack the Black Lives Matter protests?
I think it's important to be careful, and not try to paint an entire protest movement with a small unreasonable minority that may be within or adjacent to it.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-pleads-guilty-minne...
Here’s one of the others;
> According to the complaint, Hunter would later post multiple messages on Facebook bragging of his actions in Minneapolis on the night of 28 May and morning of 29 May, writing, “I set fire to that precinct with the Black community,” and, “My mom would call the FBI if she knew.” “I’ve burned police stations with Black Panthers in Minneapolis,” he claimed in one message, and in another, “The BLM protesters in Minneapolis loved me.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/...
> According to the criminal complaint against Hunter, on 26 May, as intense protests broke out in Minneapolis over the killing of George Floyd by a city police officer, a “Boogaloo Boi” based in Minnesota posted a public Facebook message: “I need a headcount.”
> Hunter, a resident of Boerne, Texas, which is roughly 1,200 miles away, responded: “72 hours out. Another “Boogaloo Boi”, based in North Carolina, posted a public message the same day: “Lock and load boys,” he wrote, adding, “the national network is going off.”
> Prosecutors say that Hunter would later describe himself to Austin police officers as “the leader of the Boogaloo Bois in south Texas”.
> By 28 May, during a night of the most intense unrest and destruction in the city, Hunter was in Minneapolis, just as the 3rd precinct police station, known locally as a “playground for renegade cops”, was being set on fire.
> Federal investigators said they reviewed video of Hunter firing rounds with his AK-47 style assault rifle into the Third Precinct building while looters were still inside and that he also *helped assist* them in setting the building on fire.
(emphasis added)
2. The people who did burn down the building are not Boogaloo associated. See my original link.
[1] - https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/boogaloo-bois-member-charged...
> For example, On May 30, HUNTER sent a message to another individual stating, "I set fire to that precinct with the black community," followed by "Minneapolis third precinct." On May 31, HUNTER sent the following message to another individual: "My mom would call the fbi if she knew what I do and at the level I'm at w[ith] it."
> HUNTER posted other messages on Facebook about his activities in Minneapolis. On June 10, HUNTER posted "I've burned police stations with black panthers in Minneapolis" and "I helped the community bum down that police station in Minneapolis." HUNTER also posted, "I didn't' protest peacefully Dude ... Want something to change? Start risking felonies for what is good."
So by his own words, he helped burn it down. DOJ couldn't find enough to charge him with that -- and by no means were the BBs the only ones causing violence & destruction in MN during the riots -- but the immediate presence of a 'fire team' of far-right agitators sure seems important.
> "My mom would call the fbi if she knew what I do and at the level I'm at w[ith] it."
These are regular folks.
Trudeau's father had the Mounties plant bombs at civilians (Canadian citizens on Canadian soil) back in the 70's and tried to blame it on some political group to justify armed intervention [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_controversies_involvin...