#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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The Trump admin now CLAIMS to have made a mistake. Not "acknowledges". Trump's clowns sent a letter signed by 3 government officials, got the predictable response (mighty Harvard swung into battle), tried to amplify and flopped, and so now are whining it's all Harvard's fault. 1/
The NYT article is pretty good. It repeats admin claims, but makes it clear that they're in chaos. They know they messed up and are scrambling. Predictably, Harvard had been negotiating, before that letter - but it sent them into battle. Unpaywalled link: archive.is/YsHpJ
The timeline: as soon as Harvard rolled out their resistance PR on Monday, the Trump admin knew they blew it. Immediately tried to walk it back. Harvard says no. On Wednesday, they escalated the threats. Still no. Now they're down to complaining it's all Harvard's fault. 3/
A new attack on Harvard, another attempt to impose government control. Trump first tried with $: canceling researchers' grants, threatening taxes. Now an attack via visas: to deport ALL Harvard's international students (38% of PhDs doing lab research). 1/ thecrimson.com/article/2025/4…
Trump's demand, again, is a classic from the fascist playbook: to force Harvard to monitor its students and report to the US government. This visa threat can't be countered with money. But Trump is missing one key issue. Many Harvard international undergrads are global elites. 2/
Harvard educates the children of Saudi sheiks and Russian oligarchs and Greek shipping magnates. Deporting the PhD students would cripple Harvard research. Deporting the UGs would alienate powerful people across the world, people whose respect Trump craves. He may not dare. 3/
Cannot emphasize enough how much of an own-goal it is to tell a university with a $53 billion endowment and a a giant PR team that you want to destroy them. Trump's goons blew it. Today's news is full of sympathetic profiles of crucial Harvard health research. Lawyers next. 1/
Fascist regimes have always managed to co-opt universities, which are timid and self-protective and can be gradually weakened. But Trump's idiots blew it last week with insane demands to set up a police state overnight. They forced Harvard to fight. 2/ static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/d…
The fascist playbook is, slowly turn the screws on universities to make them complicit. But Trump's idiots couldn't wait and now they're in full battle with behemoth Harvard and its crack PR team. The entire attack on higher education has been botched. 3/ bostonglobe.com/2025/04/15/met…
Just going to keep reposting this screenshot from Bukele's inauguration last year every time he lies in reporters' faces about how he can't return an innocent US resident. This is the guy who will be imprisoning US citizens next. 1/
Listen to what Trump says to Bukele, in this video posted by Bukele himself. At 7:29 Trump leans over and whispers: "homegrowns are next" - US citizens. And "you're going to have to build about 5 more prisons". Flagged by the NPR correspondent. 2/
That Tweet seems set for "private" but if anyone can grab the video, please do. The plan is not ambiguous: Trump wants to ship US citizens, his political enemies, to El Salvador, and Bukele is going to let him do it. Read thread below to understand why. 3/
Trump defers to El Salvador's sovereignty but threatens Greenland. Why? It's not strange. Trump is deferring to Silicon Valley neo-fascists. They dream of seizing Greenland, but El Salvador president Bukele is their guy. He's their test case for a crypto-powered autocracy. 1/
Bukele branded himself the tech-friendly modern dictator: yes death squads, but also Bitcoin. Shred your old financial system and pay salaries in Bitcoin? Done in El Salvador. Spend taxpayer money on a national cryptocurrency reserve? Also El Salvador. 2/ time.com/6103299/bitcoi…
Bukele's bitcoin bet isn't going well; he has to beg IMF for a loan. But some US oligarchs see him as a role model. It's no coincidence that Trump picked El Salvador as a partner in autocracy. When Bukele visits Trump on Monday, that must be reported. 3/ bbc.com/news/articles/…
The dreaded "I told you so" moment: for years this account has warned that Trump and his backers want to dictate what schools can teach, from K-12 and university. That they wanted to impose curricula. And now it's here: Trump is trying to seize Columbia, a private university. 1/
n Sep. 2022 I put it in a Twitter thread: that Trump had offered control over education as a quid pro quo for supporting his coup. Trump may not care about schools, but the people behind him do. They want to take away freedom of thought and speech. 2/
Trump and his backers copy Victor Orban, who seized universities in Hungary. Hungarian envoys are now at every major right-wing conference. CPAC went to Hungary. University leaders should have read Orban's blueprint and prepared. This is their plan. 3/ verfassungsblog.de/how-the-destro…