'What the hell is that?' Fox News' Geraldo buries Tomi Lahren for defending 'thuggish' trucker protests

Brad Reed
February 09, 2022

Fox News' Geraldo Rivera on Wednesday called out Tomi Lahren for supporting the "Freedom Convoy" in Canada that is disrupting life for residents in the city of Ottawa.

During a discussion about the anti-vaccine protests taking place in Canada, Rivera accused Lahren of whitewashing their behavior.

"Their behavior has been nothing short of thuggish in Ottawa," he said. "They kept people in the neighborhood awake all night revving their engines, blowing their horns. They've deprived Ottawa of business, of tens of millions of dollars, now they're blockading the international bridges."

Rivera concluded by telling Lahren that "to give these guys the mantle of freedom fighters is appallingly naïve."

Lahren responded by comparing the truckers to America's founders and said that Rivera would have called George Washington and Thomas Jefferson "thugs" and "degenerates" were he alive during the Revolutionary War.

Rivera, however, was not having it, and he was offended that Lahren would compare people carrying swastikas and Confederate flags to America's founders.

"What the hell is that about?" he asked incredulously. "They have been very destructive! 40 percent of Canada's trade goes over the bridge they have blocked!"

Watch the video below.

'What the hell is that?' Fox News' Geraldo buries Tomi Lahren for defending 'thuggish' truckers

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WATCH: Kayleigh McEnany visibly stunned as Ari Fleischer stomps on Canada's anti-vax 'Freedom Convoy'

David Edwards
February 09, 2022

Fox News/screen grab

Fox News conservative contributor Ari Fleischer left network hosts without a response on Wednesday after he revealed his opposition to a Canadian "Freedom Convoy" protest that was purportedly started by truckers who oppose vaccine mandates.

Throughout the week, Fox News has provided favorable coverage of the protest despite polls that show most Ottawa residents want the demonstrators to go home.

"The facts are important," Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany told Fleischer. "These guys were essential workers, they couldn't have a supply shortage, they're driving their trucks across the border then all the sudden on Jan. 15 there's this new Orwellian restriction put in place and they're looking around, saying, did the science change? Why Jan. 15 do we suddenly -- we're no longer essential?"

Fleischer expressed sympathy for the truckers but said that he disagreed with their tactics.

"I have a different take on this," he revealed. "I've been caught in enough New York City traffic snarls where I couldn't move for two hours because Occupy Wall Street took over all the streets in New York City -- many of the streets in New York City in certain areas."

"You don't have the right no matter how good your cause is to do that to your fellow citizens," the pundit continued. "I do not support blocking traffic, interfering with the mobility of other people, which includes their getting health care, their carrying out the things they need in life to be on time for."

He added: "And so I oppose it whether it's Occupy Wall Street or a group I'm sympathetic toward. Good goals but bad tactics. I think you alienate more people by doing this."

Fleischer admitted that the protest is "kind of fun to watch on TV."

"But these tactics backfire and I don't like them being done by anybody," he remarked. "Stay off the streets. Don't shut down the rights of other people to go where they need to go."

McEnany had no response for Fleischer. Instead, she moved on to a question attacking Ottawa police for tactics used against right-wing protesters.

Watch the video below from Fox News.

 Whose freedom is the ‘freedom convoy’ fighting for? Not everyone’s

The Conversation
February 06, 2022

Truckers and supporters on foot arrive at Parliament Hill in Canadian capital Ottawa on January 29, 2022 to protest government vaccination mandates(AFP)

The so-called “freedom convoy” has captured worldwide attention as a minority of truckers and their supporters have asserted their right to assemble and oppose COVID-19 protocols imposed by the federal, provincial and territorial governments. No problem there.

The problem lies in what’s not being said or acknowledged.

The one-word rallying cry — freedom — is the activist mantra. Who could be against freedom? But let’s take stock of the freedom that some have exercised during the ongoing rally:
Descending upon a soup kitchen, intimidating staff and demanding to be fed — all without masks.
Desecrating war memorials that pay tribute to those who fought for the very freedoms the convoy supporters enjoy.
Defecating in public, including on the property of people whose home displays a Pride flag.
Overrunning malls and shops that have forced many to shut down, thereby denying the shop owners’ and employees freedom to earn a living.
Shutting down schools in the wake of rallies, denying parents the freedom to go to work and children their freedom to go to school.
Uttering racist and threatening comments, making many people in Ottawa’s downtown feel generally unsafe.

In the tantrum for so-called freedom, the majority of participants have not denounced or condemned these reprehensible, well-documented behaviours which, notably, have gone mostly without consequence.

It’s worth noting that a freedom they’re demanding — the right to refuse COVID-19 vaccinations without curtailing their livelihood — poses immense risk not only to themselves but to everyone else, while also draining the health-care system and denying treatments for others.

Whose freedom?

But what might “freedom” mean to other Canadians?

Ask Indigenous people about freedom. Ask them about centuries of abuse and genocide at the hands of colonists. Ask them about the legacies of residential school horrors and abuse. Ask them about the devastation of the ‘60s scoop and continued government control over child welfare.

Ask Indigenous people about the ongoing subtle and overt racism they face from Canadians every day. Where is their freedom from bigotry and prejudice that continues to flourish?


A person walks towards Parliament Hill for a rally against COVID-19 restrictions.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

Ask Muslim Canadians about their freedom from ignorance and discrimination in the form of Islamophobia expressed in verbal and physical assault and even mass murder.

Ask Asian Canadians about intolerance and racism from other Canadians who blame them for COVID-19. Where is their freedom from the sheer stupidity of others?

Ask women and girls who continue to face sexism, sexual harassment, sexual assault and sexual exploitation at the hands of men. What about their freedom from gender-based violence?

Ask trans people who regularly have to deal with transphobia. Ask people who are immigrants, disabled, poor, overweight, speak a language other than English. Ask any of the usual targets of social prejudice, ignorance, discrimination and hate about how their freedoms are constantly trampled on by other Canadians.

Not everyone’s freedom

Freedom is important, but many Canadians aren’t being considered by the “freedom convoy.”

I have been conducting research on social exclusion and prejudice since 1996. It is my job to listen to people tell their stories in the classes that I teach. I listen carefully to the experiences of exclusion, ridicule and discrimination marginalized people face in a country that is supposedly equal for all. Maybe the “freedom convoy” should likewise listen carefully.

I also know about freedom first-hand. As a queer Canadian, I can attest to how homophobia raises its ugly head any time, anywhere. We don’t have the freedom to be ourselves the way many straight, cisgender people take for granted.

When I hear people at the rally passionately advocate for their freedom, but not others, I can’t help but see ignorance. Fortunately, education is a remedy for ignorance.

This scene from Seinfeld humorously captures the tension between individualism and the consideration of others.

The human rights struggles over the decades that continue to play out in Canada are about freedom. That is what Canada’s human rights history and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights make clear — as do research hubs such as the Centre for Human Rights Research.

What this “freedom convoy” is really about is self-interest. It is a petulant demand for participants to be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, regardless of anyone else. Freedom is limited to what they can see in the mirror.

Instead of a self-serving, diesel-stinking, neighbourhood-clogging mob that is having such an adverse effect on the freedom of others, they should consider going home and learning about Canada from the perspectives of others.

At home, no masks are required.


Gerald Walton, Professor in Education of Gender, Sexuality and Identity, Lakehead University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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COVID-19 truck blockade in Canada shuts down Ford plant

By ROB GILLIES and TOM KRISHER

1 of 4

A small line of semi-trailer trucks line up along northbound I-75 in Detroit as the Ambassador Bridge entrance is blocked off for travel to Canada on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022. Canadian lawmakers are expressing increasing worry about the economic effects of disruptive COVID-19 demonstrations. They spoke Tuesday after the busiest border crossing between the U.S. and Canada became partially blocked by truckers protesting vaccine mandates and other coronavirus restrictions. The Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, carries 25 percent of trade between the two countries.

 (Ryan Garza/Detroit Free Press via AP)


TORONTO (AP) — A blockade of the bridge between Canada and Detroit by protesters demanding an end to Canada’s COVID-19 restrictions forced the shutdown Wednesday of a Ford plant and began to have broader implications for the North American auto industry.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, stood firm against an easing of Canada’s COVID-19 restrictions in the face of mounting pressure during recent weeks by protests against the restrictions and against Trudeau himself.

The protest by people mostly in pickup trucks entered its third day at the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. Traffic was prevented from entering Canada, while U.S.-bound traffic was still moving.

The bridge carries 25% of all trade between the two countries, and Canadian authorities expressed increasing worry about the economic effects.

Ford said late Wednesday that parts shortages forced it to shut down its engine plant in Windsor and to run an assembly plant in Oakville, Ontario, on a reduced schedule.

“This interruption on the Detroit-Windsor bridge hurts customers, auto workers, suppliers, communities and companies on both sides of the border,” Ford said in a statement. “We hope this situation is resolved quickly because it could have widespread impact on all automakers in the U.S. and Canada.”

Shortages due to the blockade also forced General Motors to cancel the second shift of the day at its midsize-SUV factory near Lansing, Michigan. Spokesman Dan Flores said it was expected to restart Thursday and no additional impact was expected for the time being.

Later Wednesday, Toyota spokesman Scott Vazin said the company will not be able to manufacture anything at three Canadian plants for the rest of this week due to parts shortages. A statement attributed the problem to supply chain, weather and pandemic-related challenges, but the shutdowns came just days after the blockade began Monday.

“Our teams are working diligently to minimize the impact on production,” the company said, adding that it doesn’t expect any layoffs at this time.

Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler, reported normal operations, though the company had to cut shifts short the previous day at its Windsor minivan plant.

“We are watching this very closely,″ White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said earlier of the bridge blockade.

“The blockade poses a risk to supply chains for the auto industry because the bridge is a key conduit for motor vehicles, components and parts, and delays risk disrupting auto production.”

A growing number of Canadian provinces have moved to lift some of their precautions as the omicron surge levels off, but Trudeau defended the measures the federal government is responsible for, including the one that has angered many truck drivers: a rule that took effect Jan. 15 requiring truckers entering Canada to be fully vaccinated.

“The reality is that vaccine mandates, and the fact that Canadians stepped up to get vaccinated to almost 90%, ensured that this pandemic didn’t hit as hard here in Canada as elsewhere in the world,” Trudeau said in Parliament.

About 90% of truckers in Canada are vaccinated, and trucker associations and many big-rig operators have denounced the protests. The U.S. has the same vaccination rule for truckers entering the country, so it would make little difference if Trudeau lifted the restriction.

Protesters have also been blocking the border crossing at Coutts, Alberta, for a week and a half, with about 50 trucks remaining there Wednesday. And more than 400 trucks have paralyzed downtown Ottawa, Canada’s capital, in a protest that began late last month.

While protesters have been calling for Trudeau’s removal, most of the restrictive measures around the country have been put in place by provincial governments. Those include requirements that people show proof-of-vaccination “passports” to enter restaurants, gyms, movie theaters and sporting events.

Alberta, Saskatchewan, Quebec, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia announced plans this week to roll back some or all of their precautions. Alberta, Canada’s most conservative province, dropped its vaccine passport immediately and plans to get rid of mask requirements at the end of the month.

Alberta opposition leader Rachel Notley accused the province’s premier, Jason Kenney, of allowing an “illegal blockade to dictate public health measures.”

Despite Alberta’s plans to scrap its measures, the protest there continued.

“We’ve got guys here — they’ve lost everything due to these mandates, and they’re not giving up, and they’re willing to stand their ground and keep going until this is done,” said protester John Vanreeuwyk, a feedlot operator from Coaldale, Alberta.

“Until Trudeau moves,” he said, “we don’t move.”

As for the Ambassador Bridge blockade, Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens said police had not removed people for fear of inflaming the situation. But he added: “We’re not going to let this happen for a prolonged period of time.”

The demonstration involved 50 to 74 vehicles and about 100 protesters, police said. Some of the protesters say they are willing to die for their cause, according to the mayor.

“I’ll be brutally honest: You are trying to have a rational conversation, and not everyone on the ground is a rational actor,” Dilkens said. “Police are doing what is right by taking a moderate approach, trying to sensibly work through this situation where everyone can walk away, nobody gets hurt, and the bridge can open.”

To avoid the blockade and get into Canada, truckers in the Detroit area had to drive 70 miles north to Port Huron, Michigan, and cross the Blue Water Bridge, where there was a 4½-hour delay leaving the U.S.

At a news conference in Ottawa that excluded mainstream news organizations, Benjamin Dichter, one of the protest organizers, said: “I think the government and the media are drastically underestimating the resolve and patience of truckers.”

“Drop the mandates. Drop the passports,” he said.

The “freedom truck convoy” has been promoted by Fox News personalities and attracted support from many U.S. Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, who called Trudeau a “far left lunatic” who has “destroyed Canada with insane Covid mandates.”

Pandemic restrictions have been far stricter in Canada than in the U.S., but Canadians have largely supported them. Canada’s COVID-19 death rate is one-third that of the U.S.

Interim Conservative leader Candice Bergen said in Parliament that countries around the world are removing restrictions and noted that Canadian provinces are, too. She accused Trudeau of wanting to live in a “permanent pandemic.”

Ontario, Canada’s largest province with almost 40% of the country’s population, is sticking to what it calls a “very cautious” stance toward the pandemic, and the deputy premier said it has no plans to drop vaccine passports or mask requirements.

______

Krisher contributed from Detroit.

Ottawa blockade forces factory shutdowns as Trudeau slams ‘unacceptable’ tactics

© Lars Hagberd, Reuters

Ford and Toyota on Wednesday both said they were halting some production as anti-coronavirus mandate protesters blocked U.S-Canada border crossings that have prompted warnings from Washington and Ottawa of economic damage.

Many pandemic-weary Western countries will soon mark two years of restrictions as copycat protests spread to Australia, New Zealand and France now the highly infectious Omicron variant begins to ease in some places


Horn-blaring protests have being causing gridlock in the capital Ottawa since late January and from Monday night, truckers shut inbound Canada traffic at the Ambassador Bridge, a supply route for Detroit’s carmakers and agricultural products.

A number of carmakers have now been affected by the disruption near Detroit, the historic heart of the U.S. automotive sector, but there were other factors too such as severe weather and a shortage of semi-conductor chips.

Toyota, the top U.S. seller, said it is not expected to produce vehicles at its Ontario sites for the rest of the week, output has been halted at a Ford engine plant and Chrysler-maker Stellantis has also been disrupted.

Another border crossing, in Alberta province, has been closed in both directions since late on Tuesday.

More than two-thirds of the C$650 billion ($511 billion) in goods traded annually between Canada and the United States is transported by road.

Starting as a “Freedom Convoy” occupying downtown Ottawa opposing a vaccinate-or-quarantine mandate for cross-border truckers mirrored by the U.S. government, protesters have also aired grievances about a carbon tax and other legislation.

“I think it’s important for everyone in Canada and the United States to understand what the impact of this blockage is – potential impact – on workers, on the supply chain, and that is where we’re most focused,” White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said on Wednesday.

“We’re also looking to track potential disruptions to U.S. agricultural exports from Michigan into Canada.”

Washington is working with authorities across the border to reroute traffic to the Blue Water Bridge, which links Port Huron in Michigan with Sarnia in Ontario, amid worries protests could turn violent, she told reporters.

Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem called for a swift resolution.

“If there were to be prolonged blockages at key entry points into Canada that could start to have a measurable impact on economic activity,” he said.

“We’ve already got a strained global supply chain. We don’t need this.”
Protests spread

The protests were disrupting jobs too and “must end before further damage occurs,” Canada’s Emergency Preparedness Minister, Bill Blair, told reporters.

Ford suspended engine output in Windsor while its Oakville factory near Toronto is operating with a reduced schedule, as it warned the Ambassador Bridge closure “could have widespread impact on all automakers in the U.S. and Canada.”

Chrysler-maker Stellantis has also faced a shortage of parts at its assembly plant in Windsor, Ontario, where it had to end shifts early on Tuesday, but was able to resume production on Wednesday.

Protesters say they are peaceful, but some Ottawa residents have said they were attacked and harassed. In Toronto, streets were being blocked.

“Blockades, illegal demonstrations are unacceptable, and are negatively impacting businesses and manufacturers,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “We must do everything to bring them to an end.”

“We continue to know that science and public health rules and guidance is the best way to this pandemic is the way we’re going to get to the other side,” Trudeau said in the House of Commons.

The issue has caused a sharp split between the ruling Liberals and the opposition Conservatives, many of whom have expressed open support for the protesters in Ottawa and accuse Trudeau of using the mandates issue for political purposes.

In the United States, prosecutors in Missouri and Texas will probe crowd funding service GoFundMe over the decision to take down a page for a campaign in support of the drivers after some Republicans vowed to investigate.

Downtown Ottawa residents criticized police for their initially permissive attitude toward the blockade, but authorities began trying to take back control Sunday night with the seizure of thousands of liters of fuel and the removal of an oil tanker truck.

Police have asked for reinforcements – both officers and people with legal expertise in insurance and licensing – suggesting intentions to pursue enforcement through commercial vehicle licenses.

But as the authorities attempt to quell demonstrations in one area, they pop up elsewhere.

“Even as we have made some headway in Ottawa, we’ve seen an illegal blockade emerge in Windsor,” said Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino.

(France 24 with REUTERS, AFP)

Bank of Canada warns protesters blocking border may further hurt supply chain

The Bank of Canada warned Wednesday, protesters continuing to block the Ambassador Bridge between Michigan and Ontario over COVID-19 restrictions, could further negatively impact existing supply chain shortages. File Photo by Steve Fecht/EPA-EFE

Feb. 9 (UPI) -- The Bank of Canada said Wednesday that protesters continuing to block a U.S.-Canada border crossing will only add to existing supply chain woes.

"If there were to be prolonged blockages at key entry points into Canada that could start to have a measurable impact on economic activity in Canada," Bank of Canada of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said during a Wednesday afternoon news conference, following a speech.

"We've already got a strained global supply chain. We don't need this. Most truckers are trying to get goods in and out of Canada," Macklem said.

American officials concurred, pointing to the possible impact to both the automotive and agricultural industries should the traffic disruption continue.

"I think it's important for everyone in Canada and the United States to understand what the impact of this blockage is -- potential impact on workers, on the supply chain. And that is where we are most focused," White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters during a briefing Wednesday afternoon.

"We are also monitoring very closely and engaged with auto companies on what the impacts could be of auto parts, which is what -- what would come from Canada and the impact on the United States. We're also looking -- tracking potential disruptions to U.S. agricultural exports from Michigan into Canada," Psaki said.

Protesters calling for an end to COVID-19 restrictions have blocked traffic headed into Canada across the Ambassador Bridge since Monday.

The bridge between Port Huron, Mich. and Ontario, is the busiest international crossing in North America by volume.

Alternate border crossings have seen long wait times for commercial traffic.

RELATEDProtesters block U.S.-Canada Ambassador Bridge

Industry groups in Canada have also voiced their concerns over the closure.

"Canada's economy is being threatened as thousands of trucks and millions of dollars in cross-border trade that typically go through these entry points every day is being disrupte," reads a letter signed by more than a dozen different logistics and transportation associations.

"Our borders are essential trade arteries that feed businesses and Canadians with essential goods, food, medicine, and critical industrial components that fuel our economy and support our critical infrastructure," the letter said.

In Canada's sedate capital, some are fed up with noisy vaccine protests
Agence France-Presse
February 09, 2022

A protester walks in front of parked trucks as demonstrators continue to protest the vaccine mandates implemented by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on February 8, 2022 in Ottawa, Canada

 Dave Chan AFP

Canada's capital is sometimes ribbed as being so quiet it's dull. But not these days, as truckers and others frustrated over Covid-19 restrictions clog the city center, revving engines in a non-stop blast of anger.

Ottawa residents say they do not recognize their own city. And while some understand the protesters' gripes, they think that after nearly two weeks of chaos and gridlock, enough is enough.

The so-called Freedom Convoy began in January in western Canada -- launched in anger at requirements that truckers either be vaccinated or test and isolate when crossing the US-Canadian border.

But the movement has morphed into a broader protest against Covid-related restrictions and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government, and put a spotlight on pandemic curbs around the world.
Hundreds of big-rig trucks are now paralyzing the streets of downtown Ottawa, with the mayor calling the situation out of control and declaring a state of emergency.

"People told me, 'You will see, Ottawa is a dormitory town compared to Montreal or Toronto,'" said Cedric Boyer, a 48-year-old Frenchman who has lived in the capital for two years, smiling at how Ottawa has been turned upside down by the protests and drawn attention from around the world.
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Copycat protests have popped up as far away as New Zealand. Calls have gone out on social media for similar rallies in Europe and the United States.

In Ottawa, some people are using those media platforms to make a plea: "Make Ottawa boring again," playing on the Make America Great Again mantra of former US president Donald Trump, who has expressed support for the truckers.

"In a democracy, everyone has the right to have a different opinion and the right to express it," Boyer said. "But where that starts poses a bit of a problem. It is when the freedom of some infringes on that of others."

Boyer said he felt badly in particular for people who cannot work because of the protests. In the downtown area, many stores and restaurants that had just been allowed to reopen after Covid-related closures are shut down again because of the truckers.

Lisa Van Buren, 55, said there is a lot of frustration among Canadians these days.

"I think there is a real anger, we shouldn't underestimate that anger," she told AFP.

- 'Vocal minority' -

In a letter to Trudeau, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson complained about "an aggressive and hateful occupation of our neighborhoods."

"People are living in fear and are terrified -- they've now been subjected to the non-stop honking of large trucks for nine days which is tantamount to psychological warfare," he added.

Since a court ordered that incessant honking to stop, the truckers have turned instead to revving the engines of their big-rigs.

Local people are also suing the protest organizers for the chaos caused by the demonstration, and are seeking Can$10 million ($7.9 million) in damages.

"They may say that they have the support of many people, but I feel that's the vocal minority that's taking a lot of our patience away," said Patrick Lai, a 30-year-old doctor out on a walk, carrying a pair of ice skates.

"I get where they're coming from, but as someone who works in health care, I just feel like when they say, 'I've done the research,' it's not the kind of research that I'm talking about," Lai said of the protest's complaints about Covid restrictions.

"I don't tell you how to drive your truck. Don't tell me as a health care worker how to do my job."

He said he was concerned about a blockage that started Monday of the Ambassador Bridge linking Ontario province and the US state of Michigan, which is a key trade route.

"I may have supported them at the beginning, but it's gone on enough," said Cheryl Murphy, a 74-year-old retiree who lives in downtown Ottawa.


"If Trudeau had come to talk to them at the very beginning, maybe a lot of this stuff would not have happened," said Murphy.

© 2022 AFP

France: 'Freedom convoy' copies Canada trucker protests

Drivers from several French cities took off for Paris and then Brussels to demand an end to COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine requirements.



Protesters are rallying against restrictions and vaccine requirements

Protesters in France began on Wednesday what they are calling the "freedom convoy," with the ultimate goal of converging around Paris and Brussels, to demand an end to COVID-19 restrictions.

The vehicular protest was inspired by the ongoing demonstrations in Canada, where a sizeable group of truck drivers have blocked a border crossing to protest a COVID-19 vaccine mandate imposed in January by Canada and the US.

France's convoy took off from several cities. In the Mediterranean city of Nice, some 200 people motorcycles and private cars set off for Paris and Brussels. Many of them are upset about the government's health pass, a vaccination requirement that has shut out the unvaccinated from public life.

Residents of France are obliged to show the health pass, as proof of COVID vaccination, to go to restaurants, movie theaters or ride a train, among other activities.

"Lots of people don't understand why a vaccine pass is in force in France," one participant and coordinator of the event in Nice told Reuters news agency.

"Our work is to communicate to Europe that putting in place a health pass until 2023 is something the majority of our fellow citizens cannot understand," the man added.

The protests come as France is slowly emerging from its omicron wave of the virus and two months before a heavily contested general election.
Organized on social media

A total of six "convoys" have been organized so far. Aside from Nice, residents from Bayonne, Strasbourg and Cherbourg, among other cities, have taken part.

The demonstrators hope to form a major rally in Paris on Friday evening and Brussels on Monday, but organizers have not provided many details on what it will all entail.

The movement has been organized primarily through social media, using the platforms Facebook and Telegram, with each boasting some 23,000 followers, the AFP news agency reported.

"We are just tired of it all. We want to go where we want without being asked for a vaccine pass. At least with this action, I am doing something," an independent truck driver, who joined the protest in the city of Perpignan, told Reuters.

Authorities are aware of the freedom convoy. Police sources told AFP that they were already planning "security measures" ahead of the convoy's convergence, to avoid disturbances.

jcg/fb (Reuters, AFP)

Clashes, arrests as New Zealand police clear Covid protest


PUBLISHED : 10 FEB 2022
WRITER: AFP

Protesters resist police before they moved in to evict mandate protesters in parliament grounds in Wellington on Thursday.

WELLINGTON: Police and anti-vaccine protesters clashed on the grounds of New Zealand's parliament Thursday, with more than 50 arrested after demonstrators who camped outside the legislature for three days were ordered to move on.

Activists chanted the Maori haka and yelled "hold the line" as they scuffled with a line of police moving to clear a makeshift settlement from the lawns of parliament.

Police moved in early Thursday after taking a hands-off approach to the first two days of days of protests, using loudhailers to warn a crowd of about 150 they faced arrest unless they left.

Officers were punched and kicked amid cries of "this is not democracy", "shame on you" and "drop the mandate".

The protest began Tuesday as a copycat of a "Freedom Convoy" action by Canadian truckers, with hundreds of semi-trailers and campervans jamming streets in central Wellington.

Many of the vehicles left after 24 hours but a hardcore of activists remained, vowing to stay "as long as it takes".

Wellington City Council, which also took a low-key approach in the protest's early stages, said its parking officers would begin issuing tickets to convoy vehicles blocking city streets.

Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson said patience had worn thin among Wellington residents at the disruption caused by the protests and called for police to act.

"Roads are blocked in the city, businesses have had to shut, people felt threatened and intimidated by some of the protesters," he told Radio New Zealand prior to the police operation.

Wellington police commander Superintendent Corrie Parnell said more than 100 extra officers were brought in from outside the capital to clear the protest.

"It is disappointing that despite the grounds being officially closed to the public earlier today, a number of protesters are refusing repeated requests to leave the precinct," he said.

In a rare move, authorities closed the parliamentary precinct to the public to prevent reinforcements joining the protest.

The police initially edged forward across the parliament grounds but halted when it met resistance as officers arrested the most prominent protesters.

One woman, who refused to give her name, accused police of provoking the crowd.

"This has been a peaceful protest, what they've done is a disgrace," she said.

"I never thought I'd see this in New Zealand."

But locals in the capital have complained about being abused for wearing masks and several businesses near parliament have closed after staff were harassed for enforcing vaccine mandates.

Wellington City Council, which also took a low-key approach in the protest's early days, said its parking officers would begin issuing tickets to convoy vehicles blocking city streets.

New Zealand requires mandatory Covid vaccinations for people working in sectors such as health, law enforcement, education and defence, with those who refuse the jab facing the sack.

Proof of vaccination must also be shown to enter restaurants, sports events and religious services.

The "Freedom Convoy" of truckers in Canada has gridlocked the capital Ottawa since late last month, prompting city authorities to declare a state of emergency.

U.S. Army still relies on carbon-based fuels, report says

ByColton Jones

Photo by Sgt. Nathan Franco


The U.S. Army still relies on carbon-based fuels, which will likely remain the primary fuel, according to a report released by Dr. David J. Gorsich and Dr. André Boehman.

Army’s chief scientist for ground vehicle systems Dr. David J. Gorsich and professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan, director of the university’s Walter E. Lay Automotive Laboratory André Boehman noted in its report that the Army’s requirement calls for the highest energy-density fuel combined with the lowest mass and volume—and gasoline and diesel still win over alternative energy.

Army scientists’ report examined why isn’t the U.S. Army using alternative forms of energy and powertrains more extensively to reduce fuel usage for its vehicles?

Tesla is building large semitrucks, and UPS and FedEx are starting to order these vehicles for delivery operations. It seems the entire automotive industry is migrating toward electrification as battery costs have dropped dramatically and recharge times and range have improved accordingly. With all of the major automobile manufacturers moving toward hybrids and electric vehicles, it’s easy to get confused and wonder why the Army is so far behind.

The reality is that the Army is not behind. It has experts in all of these fields who have been conducting research on alternative energy sources and hybrids for military vehicles for more than 20 years. In fact, the Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office recently awarded BAE Systems a $32 million prototype agreement to integrate a hybrid electric drive system onto a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The development program is part of the Army’s effort to increase vehicle efficiency and boost power generation to support integration of future technologies and improve mobility for combat vehicles on the battlefield.

However, the bottom line is that there is a good reason the Army hasn’t unilaterally decided to switch to alternative fuels. The Army has a unique set of operational requirements, and no current fuel source meeting those requirements contains as much energy, by weight, as diesel or gasoline. Nor is there an alternative form of energy that can be carried or generated on board that, in terms of size or volume, is not at least four to 10 times that of gas and diesel. Electrification of the Army’s ground fleet (for example, by fielding integrated starter generators on tactical vehicles), is very important, but it still relies on diesel as the primary energy source.

This analysis focuses on energy density (the amount of energy stored in a system per unit of volume), conversion of that energy, as well as mass and volume requirements, to determine how they compare to current sources. The full technical paper was published in the Journal of Energy Resources Technology by Andrew Mansfield et al. Titled “Assessment of conventional and alternative energy carriers for use in military vehicle platforms,” the paper was published online Aug. 31, 2020.General Dynamics Land Systems’ Advanced Ground Mobility Vehicle with in-hub electric drive. Photo by Stephen Baack

This study builds on past studies conducted primarily through the U.S. Army Hybrid-Electric Vehicle Experimentation and Assessment program. To understand why the Army still relies on diesel and gas, we need to understand the Army’s requirements, operating environment, and how energy is stored and transformed into vehicle motion.

That’s done through a process that starts with an energy carrier, which is a substance (fuel) or “material state” that stores energy that can be later converted to other forms such as mechanical work or power. We use the term “energy carrier” because it refers to energy that can exist in a variety of forms and can be converted from one form to another. Such carriers may include springs, flywheels, electrical batteries, pressurized air, hydrogen, petroleum, coal, wood and natural gas. A flywheel is a spinning mechanical device that is used to store rotational energy that provides continuous energy when the energy source, say torque from the engine, is intermittent.

Thus, energy carriers are the vehicle’s onboard store of energy, which is transformed into useful mechanical energy through a conversion device, such as combustion engines, electric motors or fuel cells. This process provides mechanical energy that can drive a vehicle transmission, which then can produce power such that:

Energy Carrier → Conversion Device → Mechanical Energy

There are several categories of transportation-applicable energy carriers, i.e., those that can reasonably be stored on board a vehicle, such as chemical and mechanical energy carriers. The various energy carriers and conversion devices considered in this analysis are illustrated in Figure 1, below. They are: hydrocarbon fuels (gas or diesel), batteries, supercapacitors, hydrogen (fuel cell) and flywheels.

Batteries and supercapacitors (electrochemical devices similar to batteries but designed to produce very high specific power, i.e. for use in regenerative brakes on hybrid vehicles) are often compared in terms of their energy and power. Batteries have a higher energy density (the amount of energy that the system can store), compared with supercapacitors, which have a higher power density (the rate of energy that the system can release).

That makes supercapacitors particularly suitable for storing and releasing large amounts of power relatively quickly, whereas batteries are capable of storing large amounts of energy over long periods of time.

Key military requirements assume that fuels will need to be transported to the battlefield, so there is a need for high-energy dense fuels with low weight, as well as a way to generate electricity. That’s because a typical Soldier carries four or five electronic devices—and in the future that burden will likely double—and such devices are useless without electrical power generation. Modern lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries cannot keep up with demand even if a Soldier could carry a large supply.

Figure 2 summarizes the performance characteristics of commercial energy carriers and promising future technologies, and illustrates the distinct superiority of diesel and gasoline fuels. They are by far the most widely used energy carriers and are used in conjunction with internal combustion engines or gas turbines with varying levels of commercialization.

Commercialization (COM) refers to the mass-market availability of a particular technology. Generally, the cheaper a technology is, the more widely available it will be for Army use. Therefore, the higher the commercialization ((↑) signifies increasing, and (↓) decreasing), the more practical the fuel is for implementation in Army vehicles. Subsequently, it becomes a factor in our best energy carrier options, and the new equation is as follows:

(Energy Carrier + Conversion Device) + (↑) COM = Mechanical Energy (Best Performance Characteristics)

Factors such as cost, reliability and commercialization strongly impact the usefulness of some of the options in Figure 2. Typical fuels (with their ease of commercialization given in parentheses), can be liquid, such as kerosene (high), diesel (high), gasoline (high) and ethanol (medium); or gaseous, such as methane and natural gas (medium to high). Lithium air (Li–air) batteries and hydrogen are middle to low performers, with similar energy density to fuels but an order-of-magnitude lower specific energy. Li-ion (medium to high) and nickel-metal hydride (Ni-MH; high) batteries, as well as flywheels (high) are at the lower end of performance with an order-of-magnitude lower energy density and specific energy values compared with high-performance electrochemical energy carriers.

Ni-MH batteries have become very well established in the marketplace, while Li-ion batteries are more recently commercialized. Li-air batteries (low) are a very promising future technology that is not yet commercial.

Army’s ZH2 fuel-cell electric vehicle

Many full or partially electric vehicles from the past decade use Ni-MH batteries. Newer electric automotive vehicle manufacturers, such as Tesla, have chosen to use Li-ion batteries.

The conversion devices considered were combustion engines, electric motors, and fuel cells. Their performance characteristics can be seen in Figure 3, which shows a measurement of the actual performance of each power source versus its power output. Electric motors have the highest level of performance, but, as we saw earlier, they are connected to batteries that don’t have enough stored energy to last for military applications. Gasoline and diesel combustion engines are next, with methane engines at the lowest level.

Another important factor when considering alternative energy carriers is how much vehicle space will be required to transport the requisite fuel as well as all of the ancillary equipment necessary to operate and adequately power the vehicle system.

In order to assess and compare approximately how much onboard space each alternative energy carrier would require, researchers evaluated the approximate space claims by comparing the energy carrier volume and powertrain mass associated with each carrier with regard to the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) and Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) platforms. Figure 4 illustrates the predicted total powertrain mass and energy carrier volume for various single and dual hybrid energy carriers for the two vehicle systems. The results indicate that diesel and gasoline fuels are clearly the optimal energy carriers for both vehicle systems, with the lowest total powertrain masses and low energy carrier volumes.

This is true of the results for both single energy carriers in the left-side graphs of Figure 4 and for dual hybrid carriers (diesel + battery or supercapacitor) in the right-side graphs. Of the dual hybrid energy carriers, diesel fuel + Li-air hybrid is clearly optimal, yielding the greatest rate of hybridization (50 percent diesel and 50 percent Li-air) considering the relatively small mass and volume increases. These results also clearly indicate the dramatic benefits of Li-ion and Li-air battery technology over more traditionally used Ni-MH.

A prime candidate for alternative-energy carrier for military vehicles would include an optimized fuel source and conversion device, a high level of commercialization, as well as a system mass and volume as small as possible. In general, smaller (↓) mass and volume (M&V) alternatives increase the operational effectiveness of vehicles and, therefore, become part of our equation as follows:

(Energy Carrier → Conversion Device) + (↑) COM + (↓) M&V = Mechanical Energy (Best Performance Characteristics)

With respect to batteries in both single and dual energy systems, the three alternative energy technologies considered here resulted in dramatically different total powertrain mass and energy carrier volumes—much larger than for diesel fuel systems. Use of Ni-MH batteries results in a total mass 15 to 22 times larger and energy carrier volume 25 times larger than the diesel fuel system. Li-ion batteries are a dramatic improvement over Ni-MH, resulting in a total mass only 4.5 to 7 times larger and energy carrier volume 4 times larger than the diesel fuel system.

Even with this improvement, the large mass and volume increase over a diesel fuel system presents a significant challenge to its implementation, as driving performance and usable volume would likely fall dramatically. The effect of large mass and volume increases for Li-ion battery systems in similar large vehicles is evident in the short 300 – 500 mile range of the Tesla semitruck, which uses Li-ion batteries, compared with a more typical 1,000-mile range for a diesel semitruck.

Relative to diesel fuel, both hydrogen and methane yield similar total powertrain masses but significantly larger (3-5 times) energy carrier volumes. This highlights the primary issue with the low energy density of gaseous fuels and indicates that at existing and near-term technology levels, if these fuels are used as the single energy carrier for military ground vehicles, a large portion of their usable payload carrying capacity (volume) would be lost.

The Army has a unique set of requirements that cannot currently be better satisfied with anything other than gas or diesel as the primary energy carrier. Considering the high torque performance of diesel combustion engines, diesel fuel is clearly the optimal energy carrier for the Army’s ground vehicle platforms, from the perspective of both the total powertrain mass (energy carrier + conversion device), and stored energy volume.

Military applications provide common and unique challenges for energy storage systems and energy density, with regard to mass and volume, and are critical challenges for commercial and military energy storage systems. Energy storage systems for military applications must be able to be stored and operate reliably at low and high temperatures (minus 46 to 88 Celsius) and under greater shock and vibration conditions than commercial systems. Cooling systems for military energy storage and export power solutions are complicated by the harsh environmental conditions they must withstand. Consequently, this combined scenario continues to drive the Army toward liquid fuels and their physical properties.

In the future, for the Army to consider a fleetwide, wholesale change that moves away from hydro carbon fuels, it needs to develop a very detailed strategy and step-by-step paths to acquire any new technologies. This hasn’t happened yet because there are still too many obstacles that need to be resolved before alternative energy carriers can become a viable option for full-scale use. It is unlikely, in terms of scale and scope, that the Army will transform to something else in the next 10 years. While alternative power-generation exists now in many different forms, alternative fuels aren’t ready for prime time when it comes to large-scale Army use.


Colton Jones
Colton Jones is technology editor for Defenсe Blog. He has written about emerging technology in military magazines and elsewhere.

Vladimir Putin: Modern Man

Why the tension in Ukraine may feel deceptively regressive

By Tom McTague
THE ATLANTIC

FEBRUARY 9, 2022, 1:30 AM ET
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There is a peculiar modern tendency to describe things we don’t like as belonging to the past. The Taliban are medieval, Donald Trump supporters backward, Brexiteers nostalgic for empire. Under this rubric, Vladimir Putin is a Soviet throwback and the war he may soon start in Ukraine, as John Kerry once remarked, is like some 19th-century skirmish transplanted into the 21st.

It is no doubt a comfort to imagine that these things that do not conform to our ideas of modernity are, therefore, not modern. To think this way means that we are modern and on “the right side of history.” In this way of looking at the world, all the bad things we see around us are like ghosts from the past whose deathly grip on progress might frustrate it for a while, and with potentially terrible consequences, but cannot stop its wheels from eventually grinding on. This is, of course, total nonsense.


As brutal as the Taliban is, just like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, it is not a medieval organization but the product of our globalized age of digital propaganda, social media, and the like. Similarly, Trumpism is an expression not of 1950s America, but of today’s America. And then there’s Putin, who, whatever we want to believe, is a man very much of our world. In fact, not only is he as modern as any Western leader, but compared with those who seem to think that modernity equates with sometime around the year 2000, he is considerably more modern.

To be sure, modern does not mean “good” or “reasonable” or “right.” Nor does Putin’s modernity mean that he has been—or will be—successful, either for the Russian people or in his stated objectives of pushing back NATO’s frontiers and keeping Ukraine tied to Russia. To say that the Russian president is modern, in fact, is not to make a value judgment at all. He is, as my colleague Anne Applebaum has set out, a violent, kleptocratic danger to the world. Nevertheless, understanding Putin as a modern phenomenon is fundamentally important if we are to avoid the category error that assumes the danger posed by him and his sort is that they might turn back the clock, not speed it up, re-creating old worlds rather than forging new ones.

In fact, while we do not know what the 21st century will look like, it is reasonable to assume that it will far more closely resemble Putin’s vision of Darwinian geopolitical struggle than the kind of harmonious, “rules based” globalization that many in the West have hoped for. Already, for example, the Clintonian dream of a slowly democratizing China benignly slotting into the American world order looks far more archaic than, say, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s surveillance state, which is modern in the extreme.

How many times do we make this mistake, of misinterpreting malign products of modernity with leftovers from the past? I’m currently reading a book on the Cosa Nostra by the British historian John Dickie that shows that for centuries, the authorities in Italy and elsewhere dismissed the “honored society” as a product of Sicily’s backwardness. The Mafia, it was said, was destined to disappear as soon as the forces of modernity took hold on the island, bringing democracy, liberalism, and prosperity.

In fact, the Cosa Nostra was a product of modernity, born out of the enormous profits Sicily was making selling citrus fruits around the world after the breakdown of the old feudal order. In other words, the Mafia was a modern criminal organization preying on a modern economy. Ever since, it has survived by adapting to the modern world, stealing, for example, European Union investment funds designed to develop the island. To believe that the Mafia can be tackled simply by “development” or progress is to fundamentally misunderstand its nature.

Read: The decline of the American world

The risk today is that we repeat the same mistake, only on a much bigger scale with Russia and China. Whatever we think of China, the country’s turn toward autocracy and repression under Xi does not mean that it has taken a step backwards that will weaken its economy or its challenge to the American order. Perhaps it has, but believing so is mere faith. In fact, it is not China’s backwardness that makes it so scary, but its modernity. The plight of the Uyghurs is an appalling case in point.

Something similar is true of Russia, which appears to be a kind of anarcho-Mafia state, controlled by its capo di tutti capi in the Kremlin. But just because this system appears to be fundamentally unstable and disastrous for the Russian people does not mean that it is backward or that it cannot achieve its more limited aims. The Russia that is amassing on the Ukrainian border is not that which came before, under the czars or the Soviets, but something altogether new and frightening.

The reemergence of China and Russia, therefore, poses an imaginative challenge. Suddenly, we are forced to confront the prospect that in the future we may not have “progressed” toward some more enlightened, just, and universal order. Instead, the future might be more particular, competitive, national, or perhaps even civilizational. And if that is the case, what happens if we are on the wrong side of history, not because we were necessarily wrong but because we just got beat?

Patrick Porter, an international-security professor at the University of Birmingham, told me that the fallacy at the heart of our thinking is imagining competitive power politics as either modern or premodern. We have begun to think of it as such, he said—somewhat ironically—because of a particular moment in history, the fall of the Soviet Union, after which, for a short time, America had no real rival in world politics. Now it does once again, and it’s facing the prospect of a rival country invading somewhere.

“People say things like ‘You don’t do this in the 21st century,’” Porter said. “But what is this 21st century you speak of?”

Aforthcoming book called Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century, by the Cambridge University professor Helen Thompson, charts the geopolitical, economic, and political challenges faced by the West since the end of the Cold War. Thompson told me that the crisis on Ukraine’s border today is part of a wider—and much older—issue of how to manage the nations between Russia and Germany, only now in the new setting of the 21st century, in which the European Union cannot defend itself and a wider Western military alliance is led by a hegemon preoccupied with China. We think of Putin as anachronistic, she said, only because we have convinced ourselves that we have moved beyond his form of power politics, based on raw national interest, to something post-national.

The problem is that while overt displays of nationalism are now viewed as somewhat distasteful, passé, and dangerous in the West, the nation-state itself remains the foundation not just of international relations, but of Western democracies. As Thompson said, for the people to choose their representatives, there has to be a people in the first place, and historically the nation has defined who any particular democratic people is. Democracy and nationalism, in other words, go hand in hand.

But the thing about nations is that they are just groups of people who agree that they are a nation. And people can disagree. In an essay published by Putin last year, the Russian president spent 7,000 somewhat turgid words attempting to establish that Russians and Ukrainians are really one people, occupying the territory of “historical Russia.” In his essay, Putin blames Bolshevik leaders for creating a separate Ukraine, accusing them of treating the Russian people as “inexhaustible material for their social experiments,” including an attempt to wipe out nation-states entirely. “That is why they were so generous in drawing borders and bestowing territorial gifts,” he writes bitterly. This does not seem like a man looking to re-create the Soviet Union, even if he does want its borders back.

In response, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace published his own account, countering that Putin’s claim that “Ukraine is Russia and Russia is Ukraine” is wrong, arguing instead that “Ukraine has been separate from Russia for far longer in its history than it was ever united.” He also rejected Putin’s argument that the people of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine are one people descended from the “Ancient Rus,” dismissing this as a form of ethno-nationalism based on a fabrication of history.

The problem in all of this is that no real history can establish the degree to which Ukraine is or is not separate from Russia.

In a sense, Wallace is engaging Putin on his own terms: that history is the judge here. But nations can and do change (as Americans can attest). Indeed, nations themselves are relatively modern constructs. Taking the long view, people lived in things other than “nations” far before there were German, American, Ukrainian, and Russian nation-states. The Romanovs in Russia ruled over Tatars, Germans, Russians, and Finns. In the 18th century, the court language in St. Petersburg was French and the provincial nobility was German. Not until the reign of Alexander III, in the late 19th century, did Russification become the official dynastic policy, long after the idea of being Ukrainian had emerged, as the historian of nationalism Benedict Anderson shows in his book Imagined Communities.

Read: The leaderless world

None of this is to ridicule Putin’s account of Russian history. All nations are, in effect, made up, requiring somewhat mythical narratives. But just because nations are imagined does not make them fake. Far from it. As the philosopher John Gray put it to me: “The whole human experience is imaginary. Money, borders, laws, power—they only work if we all agree that they exist.” The important point is what the people in Russia and Ukraine think and whether one side can impose its will on the other.

Here is where Putin is both strongest and weakest. In the crisis he has created, Putin has an obvious escalatory dominance over the West. He has the means and potentially the will to invade Ukraine. The West will simply not fight a war for Ukrainian independence, though it will exact an extremely high price from Putin for any incursion. Putin’s behavior, then, reflects the world that exists today—one in which the EU cannot defend the nations that want to join it and the United States is psychologically retreating from its imperial borders.

Yet the very nature of Putin’s threats appear to have hardened attitudes in Ukraine against any notion of Russo-Ukrainian kinship. The paradox of Putin is that in threatening Ukraine and the wider European security order, he appears to grasp the consequences of America’s imaginative retreat from the world and the fundamental reality of geopolitical power. But he either underestimates the imaginative lure of the West for Ukrainians or understands it too well and is seeking to crush it through force. There could not be a more modern conflict than this battle between power and imagination.

Karl marx noted that in moments of revolutionary crisis the spirits of the past are summoned up to present the new scene in a way we can understand. That is what Putin is doing today. The point, as Marx spotted, is not to actually make the old spirits rise again, but to use their memory to glorify the new struggle, magnifying the task in the public imagination.

History matters, then, because it shapes how we think about the world and our place in it. And the principal way we understand history is through the history of nations. As such, national histories are necessarily stories, not scientific studies. Were millions of Ukrainians starved to death under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin? Yes. Were ordinary Russians also the victims of Bolshevism, as Putin argues? Yes. Was the collapse of the Soviet Union a liberation or a tragedy? It depends on who you were. To many, it was probably both.

As the Second World War historian Allan Allport told me, Putin, like everybody else, is both shaped by history and uses it for his own purposes. “We all operate on these two levels,” he said. The point, Allport argues, is not really whether historical narratives are true, but whether they are functional. But who decides what is functional and what is dysfunctional? In Britain, for example, there is the myth of the Blitz spirit, the idea that ordinary Londoners rallied together under German aerial bombardment. Even at the time, Allport said, people knew this was a myth. “It was less a way to describe the present than a model of how to behave.” Even today, Brits like to draw on this myth to keep calm and carry on, which is often positive but can also, depending on your political view, be a form of apathy. Maybe there are times when being less sanguine would be better.

Read: How Britain falls apart

Today Brits like to believe what Allport described as the “self-excoriating myth” that they are uniquely obsessed with the Second World War, when “the reality is everybody is obsessed with the Second World War.” This obsession just plays out in different ways in different places, as we are now seeing with the differing French, German, British, and American reactions to Putin’s threats to Ukraine. In each case, these reactions can be seen as reflections of the lessons drawn from World War II: Germany must pursue peace; France must show its independence; Britain must not appease; America must lead.

The truth is that nations and their ideas matter; we have not consigned them to the past and moved into some kind of post-national or “rational” world. That we thought we had was itself a myth we chose to believe, because it helped make sense of our Western-dominated world, causing us to feel good. We in the West like to ignore the reality that behind this apparently international order sits the enormous and slightly veiled Leviathan of American power. For most of us in the West, this is no bad thing—indeed, our place in this imperial order is enormously beneficial. Ukrainians today would, it seems, very much like to be a part of it. But we have yet to face up to what will replace it.

That moment when we in the West all bathed contentedly under the American sun has gone. The U.S. is and will likely remain the preeminent power in the world, but it is in relative decline because of China’s extraordinary growth. This is the context for Russian revanchism, an expression of the modern world, not of the one that has long since faded from view.

Putin, then, is a modern man, reacting to the modern world, using modern methods in an attempt to make something new. He is conjuring up the spirits of the past in his service, dressing up his aggression in time-honored disguise. Yet we should not be fooled by the old costumes and slogans; the reality is new and real. Putin is trying to bury the old world, not re-create it. And the very fact that he feels he can suggests that we have already arrived somewhere new. The question is who will have the tools—and imagination—to shape it.

Archbishop of Canterbury criticises Church of England for taking too long to remove slavery memorial

Justin Welby asked 'why is it so much agony to remove?'

Carl Bennett

SENIOR DIGITAL PRODUCER
PUBLISHED

 Wednesday 09 February 2022 - 05:20

The Archbishop of Canterbury has said the Church of England is taking too long to remove a memorial to a man who funded the slave-trade.

The plaque memorialising Tobias Rustat, who invested in the Royal African Company, is located inside a Cambridge University college chapel.

In comments carried by the BBC, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby asked: “Why is it so much agony to remove a memorial to slavery?”

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby speaks at the annual Lord Mayor's Banquet at the Guildhall in central London. Aaron Chown

Jesus College requested last year that the plaque be moved and exhibited in a “place of learning”.

Mr Welby asked why that was “so difficult” and said “we need to change our practices”.

Earlier, Lord Boateng, chair of the Archbishops’ Commission on Racial Justice, said at the General Synod that a lack of action on recommendations to address racial injustice was “chilling” and “a scandal”.

“Why is it so much agony to remove a memorial to slavery?”

The Archbishop of Canterbury

He said: “The most chilling thing about this report, the most concerning thing about this report, are the appendices, the long lists of previous recommendations which have not been implemented, promises made that have not been fulfilled.

“It is chilling, it is wounding, it is a scandal, and it has to be addressed.”