#SeditionHunters - a chilling dispatch from Canadian reporter @mattgurney shows parallels between 'protests' in Ottawa now and DC Jan 6. In both cases: 'useful idiots' up front, grabbing press attention, & a harder, more purposeful group waiting behind. 1/ theline.substack.com/p/dispatch-fro…
Read this essential reporting. Gurney thinks the city of Ottawa has lost control: that harder elements ("disciplined, organized, and alert for outsiders") are now entrenched in a 2nd location, a group separate from the unwitting protestors, with a goal of disrupting the state. 2/
It's the Jan 6 playbook, eerily similar. Gurney says Ottawa police cannot move now without bloodshed ("dead cops, dead truckers"), short of military help. On Jan 6, Capitol/DC police miraculously called it right, found the only path out. But they faced bear spray, not trucks. 3/
Gurney's take: Canadian leaders are paralyzed by confusion and uncertainty. Media are distracted by the "bouncy castles and the Fuck Trudeau signs". The police see the trap but not a way out of it. It's Jan 6 with heavier weapons - a loaded semi weighs 80,000 pounds. 4/
More parallels: the astroturfed efforts to build a crowd (a sudden blitz of US-based Facebook pages); the untraceable donations (Politico: "unprecedented" in scale); promotion by the same 'influencers', some tied to Canadian Ezra Levant's Rebel Media. 5/ politico.eu/article/ottawa…
Levant's Rebel Media gave the world Gavin McInnes and his Proud Boys, also launched propagandist Jack Posobiec (1.6 M followers), a key driver of US election-fraud lies. Last month Posobiec's theme was Ukraine, Putin-worship; this month he's fundraising the invasion of Ottawa. 6/
In the US, the Capitol attack needed months of build-up. But the playbook is practiced now; Canada was faster. The rest of us (& media, politicians) must learn our lessons too: avoid bouncy-castle distraction, realize the danger, and respond decisively. 7/
Adding trucks to the playbook is a terrifying gamechanger. The US Capitol attack had a mob of 15,000, still didn't succeed. Invading Ottawa, the Canadian capitol, took just a few 100. Remember: five years ago in Nice, a single truck killed 86 people... 8/ abcnews.go.com/International/…
Gurney has a thread from Feb 5 with more details on the grim situation. He says "our enemies, foreign and domestic.. are taking careful notes". It will only get worse; Jan 6 is metastasizing: now Ottawa, soon Europe. We must act, together, to stop it. 9/
We can't be naive anymore. What's happened in DC & Ottawa are NOT protests over elections or vaccines. They are attacks on democracies, fed by outside $ and by carefully crafted conspiracy theories. Here's Pat King, organizer of the trucker convoy, talking regime change... 10/
Canada is a country of 38 million held hostage by a few hundred people. Without the money and the trucks, it's not even news. With money and trucks, and malign leaders, it's a national crisis. The only solution: remove money, trucks, and leadership. 11/ bbc.com/news/world-us-…
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Reminder: Trump has tried this before. It's part of his dream of control, to send in the National Guard against the will of a state or mayor. On May 29, 2020, he Tweeted the threat: "Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.." 1/
Trump has also overtly sought a Secretary of Defense willing to order the National Guard to shoot at protestors. In 2020 he fired Mark Esper and put in Chris Miller for that reason. Pete Hegseth may face a terrible test now. 2/
On Jan 6, the National Guard arrived late likely because sane heads in the Pentagon delayed them til local police had regained control, out of fear of what Trump might order. There are fewer sane heads now. Hegseth is already failing his test. 3/
Howard Lutnick, our Sec. of Commerce, shows a disconnect from material reality that will make Americans die. A weather forecast cannot be "automated" or MADE AT ALL without data. And Trump is cutting the satellites and weather stations that provide that data. 1/
Lutnick, who is in charge of NOAA and its National Weather Service, seem to think that if you say "web" and "cloud" and "computer" and "AI" then by some magic knowledge appears. But weather forecasts depend on MEASUREMENTS. Which Lutnick is cutting. 2/ kcci.com/article/propos…
The proposed NOAA budget cuts both current satellite operations and planned future satellites meant to make better predictions. Lutnick's testimony suggests: people have forgotten that not everything is a simulation, that reality exists (and bites). 3/ spacenews.com/omb-suggests-n…
Since Frank Luntz is defending Elon Musk, a recap: Luntz, like Roger Stone, was one of "Arthur's boys", mentored by Arthur Finkelstein, the dark lord of negative campaigns who (tho gay and Jewish), pushed homophobic far-right extremists - and gave us Orban, Netanyahu, & Trump. 1/
It was the Jewish Arthur Finkelstein who created the antisemitic George Soros conspiracy, to propel Victor Orban to power. Anything to get his clients elected. Everything Luntz says now is shaded by that history. 2/ buzzfeednews.com/article/hnsgra…
It was Arthur Finkelstein who brought in Roger Stone's partner Paul Manafort - who had been working for a pro-Russian politician in Ukraine - as Trump's first campaign manager. 3/
Exactly as predicted, now that DOGE has scraped all your personal data from government agencies, it is being given to Peter Thiel's Palantir. It was always going to be Peter, who dreamed of dictatorship for decades, patiently built up his "political project" to seize power. 1/
The NYT doesn't say HOW it was decided to give Palantir all your personal data, only that it was a no-bid contract directed by "Elon Musk's DOGE". (DOGE was always a project of Peter's too.) But Thiel had installed a protege to do just this. 2/ nytimes.com/2025/05/30/tec…
One of Trump's first actions as president was to install Greg Barbaccia, a longtime Palantir employee, as US Federal Chief Information Officer, with power to direct US software systems. This account called it: he was there to give Palantir your data. 3/
NOTUS: RFK Jr's big "Make America Healthy Again" report cites non-existent studies and looks written by AI. These people now say they will override scientists to determine what is and is not "gold-standard science". Brace for public health disasters. 1/ notus.org/health-science…
Trump is waging war on knowledge. Trump's Executive Order of last week was a bid to seize control of the science agencies, under the pretext that most science data is falsified: "a reproducibility crisis". It's projection - accuse others of what you do. 2/ whitehouse.gov/presidential-a…
Whatever is going on is coordinated from the top, since JD Vance amplified the "reproducibility" message the day after the EO. Vance throws in the phrase "particularly in biology", like this is aimed at medical science in particular. And Trump is canceling vaccine contracts. 3/
Today Trump froze ALL student visa applications. Let's be clear on what this is - it's an attack on knowledge. About half the graduate students who power U.S. research are foreign. (Compare dark blue & dark red in chart.) No students = no advances in science, medicine, tech. 1/
Politico missed this point today, writing that revoking student visas would hit universities because "many... rely heavily on foreign students for funds". What it hits most is research: those visas go mostly to PhD-student researchers working in labs. 2/ politico.com/news/2025/05/2…
Nearly half of STEM PhD students in the US are foreign. They do not pay tuition - they are paid by their labs for their work. The ROI on research is so big, each yields over $10K/yr net benefit to the US. Foreign talent helps the US lead in innovation. 3/ csis.org/analysis/innov…