Xerxes’ Whipping the Hellespont (Herodotos, Histories 7.34)
They then began to build bridges across the Hellespont from Abydos to that headland between Sestus and Madytus, the Phoenicians building one of ropes made from flax, and the Egyptians building a second one out of papyrus. From Abydos to the opposite shore it is a distance of almost two-thirds of a mile. But no sooner had the strait been bridged than a great storm came on and cut apart and scattered all their work.
Xerxes flew into a rage at this, and he commanded that the Hellespont be struck with three hundred strokes of the whip and that a pair of foot-chains be thrown into the sea. It’s even been said that he sent off a rank of branders along with the rest to the Hellespont! He also commanded the scourgers to speak outlandish and arrogant words: “You hateful water, our master lays his judgement on you thus, for you have unjustly punished him even though he’s done you no wrong! Xerxes the king will pass over you, whether you wish it or not! It is fitting that no man offer you sacrifices, for you’re a muddy and salty river!” In these ways he commanded that the sea be punished and also that the heads be severed from all those who directed the bridging of the Hellespont.
(Translation by Richard Hooker)
Reason 1
It is illegal for the Canadian Government to mandate vaccination. To quote Canada's own policy.
“Unlike some countries, immunization is not mandatory in Canada; it cannot be made mandatory because of the Canadian Constitution. Only three provinces have legislation or regulations under their health-protection acts to require proof of immunization for school entrance. Ontario and New Brunswick require proof for diphtheria, tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, and rubella immunization. In Manitoba, only measles vaccination is covered. It must be emphasized that, in these three provinces, exceptions are permitted on medical or religious grounds and reasons of conscience; legislation and regulations must not be interpreted to imply compulsory immunization.” (page 3 from Canadian Report on Immunization).
Reason 2
It is illegal and a violation of human rights for medical practitioners, government officials, and businesses to employ coercion in order to compel an individual into informed consent. Canada is clear that informed consent must be obtained before any vaccination is given. Informed Consent has an ancient and long history, and at its core are the following conditions:
A patient's informed consent requires adequate information, capacity to decide, and absence of coercion. Informed consent is incorporated into a process of agreement between a patient and a physician called "shared decision making."
Under normal conditions informed consent is an agreement between the physician and their patient. Governments, businesses, and other institutions had little to no role to play in this private deliberation between a doctor and patient.
With the creation of the Biomedical STATE in which governments, businesses, commercial zones, media, schools, and domestic spaces have become medicalized, informed consent has now been expanded beyond the private deliberations of a doctor and patient to include nearly all social and political institutions.
To that end any form of punitive measures to compel vaccination by institutions is a violation of informed consent. It is impossible for an individual to consent to a medical treatment under these conditions. Here are a few examples of punitive coercion to compel a medical treatment:
*Vaccine Passports (Gesundheitpass) and the occlusion from a free and open society.
*Job Loss, vaxx-tax, and financial indemnity on those who employ informed consent.
*Marginalization, discrimination and demonization. Many government officials around the globe have employed Hate Speech against those who have declined a medical treatment. Such Hate Speech violates the central tenet of Informed Consent, that people’s medical decisions are to be respected. There are people now who actively wish death upon those who practice informed consent. This is a direct outcome of the Hate Speech promoted by politicians in Canada.
*The use of Fear and Hysteria to “nudge” individuals into vaccination. Behavioral Scientists employed fear and hysteria to compel people into making medical decisions. Not only is the use of mass fear and hysteria a violation of informed consent, it is also an act of domestic and psychological terror. It is not an understatement to say that terrorism was deployed to compel vaccination. Nudging is a violation of informed consent.
*The changing state of knowledge on vaccine efficacy and safety mandates that all vaccination must move slowly and prudentially. One cannot give informed consent IF the information of the medical treatment is changing and inchoate.
*The lack of governmental transparency with respect to COVID policy and contracts with pharmaceutical companies. It was imperative that there be a transparent and rigorous debate with respect to COVID policy. The absence of that debate and the lack of transparency—concomitant with the obvious failures of the policy—have resulted in a lack of credibility among political leaders and health practitioners. The government must release all minutes, memos and documentation that resulted in the current COVID policy and the rhetoric around this policy.
In addition, there needs to be complete and total transparency of the Liberal Government in Canada as to when it knew that the vaccines lost efficacy and would require more shots. In April 2021 Justin Trudeau purchased 10s of millions of booster shots at a time when it was stated publicly that the vaccines were 95-100 percent effective at sterilizing and neutralizing COVID.
How many Canadians would have taken a novel inoculation under an EUA (which only tested for two shots) had they known they would likely need to continue to take shots in perpetuity?
To what degree have Canada’s contractual obligations to Pfizer resulted in Canada’s COVID policy?
Under these conditions it is simply impossible to give Informed Consent.
Reason 3
Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Government, and the provincial governments have showed themselves to be wholly incompetent with respect to constitutional governance.
The Canadian Bill of Rights and the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, for example, have been wholly violated. That there are individuals who actively are subverting the interpretation of these rights and values is grotesque, and all Canadians should reject jurists who fail to see the moral and ethical hazard of rejecting the tenets of the Bill of Rights and the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.
Anyone honest and who has an ounce of integrity would read both of these documents (it will take you 5 minutes) and come to the conclusion that the current governance at the federal and provincial levels are in total and complete violation of Canadian rights and values.
Any lawyer or judge who says otherwise ought to have there law license revoked. They are simply shills.
Reason 4
It has been one of the great progressive achievements of feminism that bodily autonomy and consent have been inscribed in Quebec Law. To quote:
There are five important elements to remember with regard to consent:
Consent is invalid if the person asking for consent is in a position of authority over the other.
Consent is valid only if it is given without coercion, that is, the person consenting cannot be forced to do so in any way (through blackmail, threats, the consumption of alcohol or drugs, etc.).
Consent can be partial, meaning the person who gives their consent can choose to accept only part of what is proposed or requested.
Consent must be renewed. For instance, the person who previously obtained the consent of another person for a particular activity must make sure that the other person consents to the same activity again.
Consent can be withdrawn at any time; a person who consents to something can change their mind at any time and withdraw their consent.
You will notice the semantic alignment of Informed Consent and Sexual Consent. The role of consent is essential in every human activity in a free society. It is notable from this perspective that it is IMPOSSIBLE to consent if there is an unequal power dynamic between two entities. That employees and citizens are in an unequal power dynamic with respect to their employers and governments.
It is a violation of consent to mandate a medical procedure by one entity who has power over another entity.
This may make people uncomfortable, but inoculation under coercion by an unequal power authority is a species of rape. It is of a different kind and quality of sexual violence, but it is a form of non-consensual violence nonetheless.
It must be condemned. There is no grey area here.
Reason 5
COVID will end.
What I mean is that there will be a COVID-Flu season for the remainder of human existence. Hospitals will need to increase seasonal capacity (it is a sign of incompetence that they have not solved this issue already) and prophylactics will need to be offered, especially for those who are elderly and comorbid.
It is vital for liberal democracies to demonstrate that they can uphold their values during a pandemic such as COVID. If History still exists after COVID—when it is possible for scholars to question the narrative they themselves have helped promote—it will be clear that those countries faired better in the long term who upheld democratic values and constitutional norms, while also employing a strategic and stratified COVID policy that was conditioned on age and comorbidity.
The Great Barrington Declaration will be deemed as the proper protocol for all future pandemic responses.
Be that as it may, it matters what kind of society we have after COVID. That governmental officials employed division, segregation, and medical apartheid will have deep and lasting negative outcomes in Canadian society. To be frank, Canada may not survive, or rather, it will look so wholly different that one ought not to call it Canada any more.
The Trucker convoy is arguing for a Canada in which medical choice and informed consent—along with proper moral and ethical values—are foundational. The society they are advocating for after COVID is one in which the most sacred values are protected for our children and our grandchildren.
Your fear now ought not to violate my grandchild’s right to say “NO.”
Reason 6
Governmental and health officials are NOT experts in culture and society. That you know how a virus works—or rather are investigating in real time how a new virus operates—does not mean you have any expertise outside that domain of knowledge.
It is a feature of incompetence and ignorance that experts in one domain made mandates that infringed on other domains of which they simply have no understanding.
Anyone who has advocated for the Canadian approach to COVID is complicit in the extreme rise of sexual violence, domestic abuse, mental health crises, suicidality, poverty, homelessness, financial malfeasance, and corruption. All of these negative outcomes INDICT the COVID policy, and they INDICT those policy makers whose short-sightedness and ignorance resulted in these profound harms.
Justin Trudeau (and many provincial governments, in particular Quebec) are empathically ignorant and uneducated.
There is no nice way to say it.
These leaders are unhinged. They have said irresponsible things and made unscientific claims.
It is clearly the case that Trudeau simply does not understand who is genuinely at risk from COVID or how the inoculations function. The same is true of Ford and Legault.
Every press conference is simply misinformation, fear hour.
The Truckers are right not to comply with a government that has so damaged the lives of its citizens through policies made by people who had no right to make such policies.
Reason 7
The Canadian media landscape is polluted. News outlets like the CBC are simply a propaganda arm of the government. They have failed the most basic test of journalistic ethics: to question all policy decisions made by the government and those in power.
COVID has highlighted that most media outlets are nothing more than Pravda.
The protest of the Truckers is, in part, against a media machine that has been wholly corrupted by its positionality to power.
Given that the CBC is publicly funded, all editorial decisions and minutes from meetings MUST be made public. There must be media transparency.
The Canadian people must have the ability to understand the why, what, who, when and how of the media informational ecosystem.
The Trucker protest has highlighted all the more how corrupt and unethical Canadian media has become under the Trudeau regime.
Reason 8
The Trucker Convoy reflects a moral and ethical vision that needs to be voiced during the era of COVID.
For the last two years everyone has accepted certain limitations on rights and freedoms because we care about each other. This standard was correct for a period of time.
However, the right policy—over time—eventually becomes the wrong policy. Canadians have been governed by the wrong policy for too long.
The Trucker Convoy represents the reimposition of a broader moral and ethical standard that the current policy MUST account for.
*We know who is truly at risk from COVID.
*We know the limitations of the vaccines.
*We know the costs and benefits of lockdown policy. At this point the costs are far more severe. There is no debate on this anymore.
*We know our leaders are incompetent and lack imagination.
*We see other countries and states who employed more effective policies, and we see the positive outcomes of those policies on these countries and states.
*We know there are prophylactics beyond inoculation that must be deployed.
*We see the corruption of our leaders and media.
*We have seen the harm of segregation and division on our society.
It is time for Canada to reacquaint itself with constitutional norms and standards.
The Trucker Convoy has reminded Canadians that the Bill of Rights is the governing standard.
These rights are inalienable. They are not granted by government. They cannot be taken away by government.
The Canadian government was given the benefit of the doubt.
It is now wholly in doubt.
Reason 9
The policy outcomes of the Canadian government have resulted in huge swaths of Canadians in becoming complicit in overt violations of human rights.
*All businesses who implemented vaccine passports are complicit in the violation of human rights.
*All employees who demanded vaccine passports and discriminated against Canadians are complicit.
*All Canadians who actively adopted the vaccine passport in order to participate in society are complicit.
*The government and governmental officials who proposed and mandated vaccine passports are complicit.
You all are complicit in the Banality of Evil.
To quote Hannah Arendt:
For when I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III 'to prove a villain.' Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all… He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing… It was sheer thoughtlessness—something by no means identical with stupidity—that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period.
Remember, there are degrees of evil. Arendt was gesturing to only one of the most marked degrees of evil, but to all of our detriment our governments have drawn a through line from the current human rights violations to the horrible atrocities of our past.
This is unconscionable. See Reason 3 to understand why this occurred.
You are complicit.
This may make you feel uncomfortable, and you may seek a social media enclave to confirm your bias and hide amongst those who are ethically and morally degenerate as you.
That does not change the fact that you are complicit.
It is time to end the vaccine passports.
For those who are complicit…Apologize.
Reason 10
It is time for governments to acknowledge they have done everything they can. The Trucker Convoy understands this.
*We have vaccines. People can choose to take them. People can choose not to take them. We must respect those choices. Tolerance is vital in a free society.
*Hospitals know they need to increase capacity for seasonal surges.
*Everyone understands their risk of COVID now. We know what we are dealing with. This disease is categorically different for children than it is for the elderly and comorbid. Stop scaring the children.
*We have seen the malfeasance of the media and our government elites.
*We have seen the unethical employment of “nudging.”
*We have seen the harm of the violation of informed consent.
*We have seen the unraveling of the social fabric.
*We have seen the harm created by the biomedical STATE, in weaponizing medical apartheid, segregation, and division.
*We have seen enough of failed leadership, of the demonization of Canadian citizens by an individual who lacks all integrity and does not have the proper balance of intelligence and wisdom to guide Canada through this crisis.
There will be those who will continue to be motivated by fear. Your fear is not my responsibility.
I do not need to adopt your world view. I do not need to acknowledge your anxiety over COVID.
You have been demoralized. Your government demoralized you.
You need to begin the healing process of remoralization.
The government has become hubristic.
In its “overweening pride and arrogance” it thinks that it can technocrat its way out of the biological realities of viral transmission.
The Canadian Government is like Xerxes’ whipping the Hellespont. It has misdiagnosed human limitations in response to the reality of the natural world.
Hubris is always punished.
The Truckers remind us that hubristic governments are simply bad governments.