The Professor & the Bouncy Castles
Some people don't have the first bleeping clue what they're talking about.
I’ve interviewed the person who brought the bouncy castles to Ottawa’s Freedom Convoy protest. Her name is Bianca. She lives in small town Quebec, a three hour drive from Ottawa. She was 31 years old at the time.
I’ll be telling her story soon. In the interim, it’s amusing to notice what got said about those bouncy castles. By people who hadn’t the first bleeping clue what they were talking about. Who had no firsthand knowledge yet jumped right in there on social media.
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce Thomas Juneau, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa. His specialty is Middle Eastern politics.
The day before police began their violent crackdown on the peaceful truckers, Professor Juneau decreed that the bouncy castle - singular - was an info op.
That’s a military term. An information operation is a “campaign that is dedicated to obtaining a decisive advantage in the information environment.” Which sounds an awful lot like a propaganda campaign, except that it’s multi-faceted. (An info op practitioner allegedly coordinated a battery of Russian initiatives in an effort to undermine the 2016 American election.)
An info op is planned. It’s deliberate. It’s designed to achieve a certain result. It’s directed by someone in some official capacity, someone who’s being paid to influence things.
Our good professor is certain the bouncy castles were covert action. He’s adamant they weren’t organic. But he actually doesn’t have the first clue. There wasn’t just one bouncy castle - singular - in Ottawa. They were numerous.
The first batch arrived on the evening of Friday, February 4th. Bianca thinks she had ten large bouncy castles that weekend (February 5th and 6th). Which was just the beginning.
On the following weekend (February 12th and 13th) another collection of bouncy castles came to town. So did street performers and face painters. Along with cotton candy, a popcorn machine, and a sweetheart of a DJ from Vancouver.
In between those two weekends as well as afterward, an occasional bouncy castle put in an appearance. The photo at the top of this page, for example, shows a bouncy castle on a Thursday.
Professor Juneau had ample opportunity to observe what was going on in downtown Ottawa, the city in which he is, after all, employed. He had ample opportunity to examine online videos. Prior to pompously pontificating.
Had he done either, he wouldn’t now look like a first class idiot.
The old saw "Often wrong but seldom in doubt" ... his certainty about the 'info op' lends doubt to all of his opinions. He was not alone in impugning motives. Our silly and sad Prime Minister easily topped that list.
I hope Prof. Juneau is better at analyzing the Middle East.