French truckers inspired by Canadian protests against vaccine mandates arrive in French capital as Macron urges calm despite deploying armoured tanks and thousands of police on to streets.

Armoured vehicles lined the historic streets of Paris yesterday evening as the French capital braced itself for the arrival of thousands of 'Freedom Convoy' truckers who plan to blockade the city.

The convoy, inspired by the Canadian truckers demonstrating against vaccine mandates, began in cities across the country including Bayonne, Perpignan, Lyon, Lille, Strasbourg and Nice, and started trickling into towns outside Paris late Friday evening. Police sources estimate almost 2,000 vehicles will descend on the city.

The South African GP who first raised the alarm about Omicron says she was pressured by governments "not to publicly state that it was a mild illness".

Dr Angelique Coetzee told Germany's Die Welt newspaper this week that European governments asked her to portray the new strain as just as serious as previous Covid-19 variants, including Delta.

"I was told not to publicly state that it was a mild illness," she said. "I have been asked to refrain from making such statements and to say that it is a serious illness. I declined."

Asked what she meant, Dr Coetzee said she was a clinician and "based on the clinical picture there are no indications that we are dealing with a very serious disease".

Christian-owned funding platform GiveSendGo said it would not comply with an order by a Canadian court to freeze over $8.6 million in donated funds destined for the Canadian truckers' Freedom Convoy 2022, saying the court has no jurisdiction over the U.S-based company.

The government of the province of Ontario, Canada, led by the ostensibly "conservative" Premier Doug Ford, put in a request with the provincial court to legally freeze the funds — a request that was granted. The Freedom Convoy 2022 campaign has reached $8.6 million with a goal of $16 million to support Canadian truckers as of this writing.

A statement from Doug Ford's office announced the decision:

Today, the Attorney General brought an application in the Superior Court of Justice for an order pursuant to section 490.8 of the Criminal Code prohibiting any person from disposing of, or otherwise dealing with, in any manner whatsoever, any and all monetary donations made through the Freedom Convoy 2022 and Adopt-a-Trucker campaign pages on the GiveSendGo online fundraising platform. This afternoon, the order was issued. It binds any and all parties with possession or control over these donations.

We've been covering this truck strike in Canada all week and at the end of the week there were a couple of different images that kind of floated around your head. Picture the cops stealing the fuel from the freezing truckers. Picture the smiling trucker talking about love and waving the Canadian flag. Totally non-threatening. But above all, you remember the hysteria of the people in charge as they look out on the sea of working-class people who are sick of being pushed around. The people in charge are extremely upset about this. Hysterical. It's hilarious. You can just picture a transportation secretary, little Pete Buttigieg jumping up and down, shaking his little hands, screaming at the truck drivers, get off my bridge, you guys, get off my bridge right now!

It's not just Mayor Pete, you remember those angry tweets from the CNN contributor who suggested we should slash their tires, siphon their diesel fuel, throw them in prison. They're all Torquemada now. They are talking like they are scary. But keep in mind, these are not displays of power. This is not how confident people talk. These are squeaks of impotence. Our leaders are furious at the truckers because they know that there's not a lot they can do about the truckers. They don't know anything about trucks, for one thing. How do you get a truck off a bridge, especially when it has no fuel or tires? They have no idea You just order someone to do it. It's kind of like an Uber eats. Some guy trots out and removes the truck. The problem is, the people who drive the trucks don't feel like following orders anymore. They are ignoring Pete Buttigieg.

If you actually want to move a big rig, you need tow truck operators. And those tow truck operators know truckers. They know truckers are not a racist. They are not Nazi's no matter how many times Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau claim they are. So some of them aren't inclined to help. David Allen, for example, is the president of Gary's Towing in Thunder Bay, Ontario. He told Canadian media "we have all the capabilities on our tow trucks to do it, but I don't think anyone would want to." Another tow truck operator said even if tow truck operators wanted to help, carry out Pete Buttigieg's orders it would be very hard, "In the end, the truckers get a say on whether you are taking that truck away or not." There are technical reasons for this, it turns out trucks are heavy. They have air brakes and steel-belted tires. Some truckers removed their tires completely. So what now? Now is when you start to panic. And they definitely are. This afternoon the Prime Minister of Canada clearly who is Fidel Castro's illegitimate son, came out from hiding to threaten the protesters directly.

The official response to the truckers protesting COVID restrictions is one of the most disgraceful political episodes in the history of Canada as an autonomous country. The prime minister's statement that the truckers were probably homophobic, trans-phobic, misogynists and racists was an outrage that was unsupported by evidence. Instead of dealing with these truckers and the issues that propelled them across the country in a serious way, the prime minister attacked them en route as a "small fringe minority" who hold "unacceptable views." There is no justification for any of this and polls show the truckers represent approximately as many Canadians as the number who voted for this government in September. The government propaganda machine followed with a smear job highlighting Nazi and racist imagery, though there is very little of that, and a Confederate flag-waver was led away by the truckers.

Former governor of the banks of Canada and England and apparent Liberal office-seeker Mark Carney denounced the protesters in the Globe and Mail, accusing them of "sedition" and "insurrection," and announced that their goal is "undermining our democracy and the rule of law." In fact, they are just trying to avoid two weeks of quarantine when crossing the border, not overthrow the government. Taking on the august airs of a central banker, he wrote: "I know from experience that crises don't end by themselves. You can't spin your way out of failure." That is particularly apposite coming from someone who was a total failure as the governor of the Bank of England when he became a mindless parrot of the Cameron government in claiming that Britain would be devastated if it approved Brexit, and when he tried to turn the bank into an authoritarian enforcer of a green ecological despotism, a public policy area that is no business of a central bank and where his views are moonshine.

Juliette Kayyem denies promoting 'vigilantism' after calling for hostile action against protestors

In media news today, President Biden calls NBC's Lester Holt a 'wise guy,' CNBC and CNN sound the alarm on inflation, and a CNN analyst calls for people to slash the tires of the Canadian trucker convoy.

CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem hastily backtracked her Thursday call for Canadian truckers participating in the protests against the Liberal government's coronavirus policies to have their tires slashed.

"Earlier today, I tweeted something that has been used by others to suggest I was promoting vigilantism. I was not. People have the freedom to protest. Governments have the responsibility to protect public safety. That was what I intended to say," Kayyem tweeted late Thursday evening.

Arizona Republican State Rep. Mark Finchem introduced a bill Monday calling to decertify the 2020 election in three counties.

Finchem, who has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump for Arizona Secretary of State, said:

"In the case of Maricopa, Pima and Yuma Counties, the fact that there is evidence showing illegal acts occurred, whether by intent or omission does not matter, the margin of error exceeds the margin of victory."

While President Joe Biden was declared the winner in Maricopa and Pima counties, Trump won Yuma county. Finchem argued:

"If we are a nation governed by the 'rule of law,' as we so often espouse, then violations of the law must have consequences. In that regard, the 2020 General Election is irredeemably compromised, and it is impossible to name a clear winner of the contest."

Nevada is rescinding requirements for people to wear masks in public, becoming the latest state in the U.S. to lift restrictions imposed to limit the spread of coronavirus but that have increasingly drawn complaints and protests.

Gov. Steve Sisolak announced during a video news conference Thursday from Carson City that the state will no longer require face coverings in public places, "effective immediately."

However, mask rules at casinos were not immediately lifted. The state regulatory agency, the Nevada Gaming Control Board, said it will send an industry notice "notifying our licensees of the change."

Masks won't be required in jails and correctional facilities, Sisolak said, but "there are locations where Nevadans and visitors may still be asked to wear a mask" including hospitals, clinics and long-term care facilities, and at airports, on planes and on public buses and school buses.

The Democrat acknowledged a wide divergence of opinion about mask mandates, saying he knows some people think the state is not ready to drop mask requirements, but that deceasing case numbers and hospitalizations had convinced him it was the right time.

At least in the Boswash (the corridor of East Coast establishment power running from Boston to Washington), using January to make public predictions about the year ahead is an ironclad tradition. Usually these predictions end up being completely wrong, because no one here has any idea what they're talking about. I hope that holds true in my case, because I want to use my mandatory annual forecast to dump a few gallons of cold, contrarian water on what seems to have recently become a fashionable prediction: that the "woke" ideological revolution roiling the West has peaked and will soon be in full blown retreat.

Consider a handful of examples of this new genre:

• Is Wokeness Almost Over? (Scott McConnell, The American Conservative)
• The fightback against wokeness has begun (Frank Furedi, Spiked)
• Why Wokeness Will Fail (Bret Stephens, New York Times)
• The end of woke is nigh (Peter Franklin, UnHerd)
• Emerging Cracks In The Woke Elite (Andrew Sullivan, Substack)
• Dave Chappelle May Help Tame Wokeness [as part of a "Thermidorian reaction"] (Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal)
• Inflation Might Spell Doom for Wokeness (Lewis M. Andrews, The American Conservative)
• Is this the end of progressive America? (Joel Kotkin, UnHerd)

While a few of those examples are from earlier in 2021, this theme seems to have really emerged and begun to solidify into a consensus among more centrist types soon after the beginning of November 2021. That was when some conservative American politicians won or almost won a few special elections, in part by riding a popular backlash to Critical Race Theory in schools, and a number of local ballot measures to defund police departments failed around the country. Republicans, feeling especially good about their chances against a flailing Biden, started drooling over a "Red Wave" expected to sweep them back to power in the 2022 midterm elections. And now that private equity executive turned Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin has personally won the culture war's Battle of Midway, the tide has turned and, aside from the occasional messy beachhead here or there, inevitable victory is now in sight, or something.

A physio who was forced to massage "creepy" Prince Andrew in his bedroom claims it was "absolutely clear" he wanted more.

Emma Gruenbaum, 50, said the "huggy" Duke would ask her to stay behind after their sessions at Royal Lodge, Windsor. She also told The Sun how his behaviour was "sleazy" and claimed he was a constant sex pest.

The massage therapist said that Andrew:

• was a CONSTANT sex pest and tried to hug her after sessions.
• ALWAYS insisted on being naked apart from one of his own towels.
• DEMANDED full-body massages were always carried out in his bedroom despite her objections.
• HOW within minutes of their first session he asked her a highly-personal question about her sex life.

Emma, who was 34 at the time, said: "Absolutely [I felt he wanted more]. It was very clear. "I mean it wasn't explicitly asked but he was so huggy. He would say 'do you want to stay? Do you want to watch a movie?'