It’s interesting that the protesters have a very clear goal and want to be heard, but rather than diplomatically solving the situation Trudeau has exercised a new level of force not used on citizens before. It took a couple weeks of protest for some of the harshest punishments to be used on citizens. It’s been misstep after misstep by Trudeau. First name calling, then offering some very threatening tweets, then executing on the threats.. when instead he could have taken a hour of his time to say he will sit down and hear out their point of view in full. It’s actually incredible that he could have misunderstood the people involved and the point of the protest so much and then acted as a military against them as if they are enemies and not citizens. Canada has state run media and I guess this was just the next step in government control.
Or, be careful when you take sides in a global geopolitical conflict dating back to before the Cold War and recently flaring up into open informational warfare so intense it swung elections and dragged in whole Silicon Valley unicorns as collaborators. When people figure out what happened you don't get treated as an innocent bystander. Do your due diligence.
Except it’s really not that anymore. Constant noise disruptions, gridlocking the city…it’s causing harm and the protests have damaged property, businesses and even gone as far to dance on the war memorials. These are not our best people.
You could describe MLK’s protests as disruptive, causing gridlock, damaging to businesses, etc.
BLM protestors danced on and destroyed statues as well.
The whole point of protest is to be disruptive. Being anti-vax is super stupid but protesting government mandates (or systemic racism, or anything) should be allowed.
The whole point of an escalated protest is being willing to accept the consequences. If you park illegally, you expect to get a parking ticket, protest or no. You expect your vehicle to get towed. If you defy a court injunction, you expect to spend the night in jail.
The people chaining themselves to trees expect to get arrested and spend time in jail. They also expect that their time in jail will help their cause.
Being part of a protest is not a "get out of jail free" card. Rather the opposite, spending some time in jail is part of the point.
Why do you think protesters get defense attorneys? Why do you think all but the most extreme cry “first offense”? Why do you think college students are the most prolific protesters? To avoid punishment.
The point is to signal that you're willing to get arrested. That shows you're committed. If you're not willing to get arrested for your cause, some can accuse you of virtue signalling.
They don't actually want to get arrested, but they do want to signal that they won't stop protesting just because they risk getting arrested.
A government? Making up laws? I think that’s literally called “a day ending in ‘y’”.
You may or may not have a higher power to defend you against bad laws, depending on your constitution and/or your government being e.g. treaty bound to an institution equivalent to the European Court of Human Rights.
Even though your new caveat reduces the frequency by which governments do it, this is still absolutely how they operate. I’ve had to delay a meeting with my local MP back before I left the UK because they had an “emergency” debate (IIRC due to a court ruling that one of their laws was bad).
Emergency powers allow the overruling of safe-guards, grace/response-periods and due process. It is not "how they operate", it is explicitly outside the norm, and the emergency powers invoked by Trudeau had never been used before, let alone against non-violent civilians.
> because they had an “emergency” debate
Was it about (seldom used) emergency powers, and what was it in response to? A terror attack?
An "emergency" debate about bad laws isn't the same as "emergency" powers.
> a different hill to climb
The missing context is the context of the thread - that we are talking about the actions of Trudeau actions against the protestors.
You could for sure. I would argue that in all cases there reaches a point where you either accept you’re breaking the law to invoke change or you’re simply going to have to keep trying to invoke change while accepting others don’t yet agree with you. These folks seem to be dealing in the bucket of issues where they have mixed support, they’ve said their piece, it’s time to change tactic if they believe in their causes, or they risk losing any sympathizers.
Frankly I’m not one of them, but I’m sure there are people in Ottawa that might have supported them that now won’t.
There’s also the issue that they were protesting provincial issues to the federal government. For weeks. After being told this constantly, some packed up and moved to the provincial legislator in toronto. They’re just not very well organized and it’s suggesting they might not be the issue anyone wants to hitch onto.
Except it is[1] when you want to appease your Sikh community.
Tactics used during the protests that Trudeau supported and described as peaceful[2]: Gherao (encirclement), dharna (sit-in), raasta roko (traffic obstruction), demonstration, suicide, counter legislation.
Watch a lot of CBC, do you? I would recommend visiting the protest to see for yourself rather than relying on media narratives to form your opinion. Keep an open mind and judge for yourself. If you're not able to physically visit, there are large numbers of streamers who do nothing but walk around the area. The more neutral ones provide little to no commentary and try not to interact with anyone so you can better form your own opinion (almost sounds like actual journalism). At least give it a try.
If you lose the ability to protest, what barrier remains for crooked politicians to draw up whatever legislation they like? What the Nazi's did was legal you know - they wrote the laws!
The majority of the money was foreign.
edit: and is not being funneled to the actual protestors. The people recently arrested tried to get some to use for legal fees. No bueno.
yeah, yeah, no citation. Pretty hard to cite facebook posts that were removed because of subject matter.
Is the money being foreign necessarily an inditement of the crowd funding campaign? The money came from 93,000 donations according to the article. Really that just says that it had global traction.
The foreign money isn't great, but it's not really an inditement.
The money coming in from all over, going to unknown persons, not being distributed to protestors who requested funding for gas/food/legal fees associated with the protest, the $1m withdrawal earlier with no (publically, at least) known trail... all that together is kind of a problem for anyone involved.
The funds were frozen in their TD bank account before they could be distributed - that smaller portion of the total that was released. Likewise, the organizers had a lawyer and accountant hired before GoFundMe would release any money.
Some 36,000 Canadian donors — about 39 per cent — are listed in the partial leak, apparently taken from U.S.-based platform GiveSendGo and posted online by a website devoted to disseminating leaked data.
But that number is dwarfed by the number of American donors — some 51,000 or about 55 per cent.
--
The 39% of the donors were local, and donated 51% of the money. 61% of donors were foreign, including the largest donor.
> The leader on Wednesday said that "foreign influence" is causing the protests across the country. Roughly translated by Reuters, his words implied "There is no any unrest in the country. And you know, without the external force - there would have not been even that."
China:
> China Blames Foreigners for Trying to Foment Unrest
> The government narrative changed, too. Nazarbayev’s handpicked president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, began pointing the finger at domestic and foreign “bandits and terrorists” and an internal plot to foment chaos.
> Solomon Islands prime minister Manasseh Sogavare has blamed foreign interference over his government’s decision to switch alliances from Taiwan to Beijing for anti-government protests, arson and looting that have ravaged the capital Honiara for the past three days.
> Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of Turkey, urged all state agencies in a decree published in the Turkish Official Gazette to act urgently to counter "foreign influence and corruption of national culture" as well as to safeguard "moral and national values" in media and film productions.
> However, critics of the Turkish government believe that this could be for the purpose of increasing censorship.
Firstly, there is more money flowing to the peaceful protestors from other sources/channels than either the GoFundMe or GiveSendGo - which this myopic propaganda news piece (to go along with the hack/leak of personal data from GiveSendGo's database) of course that doesn't include critical thinking or discuss the broader context - and then people parrot the shallow narrative because they're not thinking for themselves, but just repeat what they see in mainstream - or upvoted to the top of Reddit, etc.
Likewise, we only have the demographic data for GiveSendGo. I'd bet that if the GoFundMe donations weren't attempted to be stolen that the demographics of the original GoFundMe donors has a high probability of being mostly from Canadians - and that it was the news of those funds being stolen; The funds blocked and attempted to be stolen via collusion with the government; a war crime under the Geneva convention by the way, to prevent resources/support from getting to protestors, which Canada is a signatory to - which the police officers who stole fuel, gas and firewood, from the protestors will be held accountable for this, eventually; the Ottawa police who might I add aren't mandated to be vaccinated or lose their job, the hypocrisy is quite shocking but telling here.
GoFundMe also broke their own standard protocol of not automatically refunding the funds to the donors - but instead saying they'd donate it their "pre-approved charities". This action very well could have outraged the world and many Americans who then may have felt the need to support these more and more clear tyrannical behaviours.
The world is far more complex than most are willing to invest the adequate, necessary time to understand, but then are happy to feel righteous that their arguably shallow view must be right - making it easy to toe the line feeling like you're part of the crowd/mob, and therefore "safe in numbers;" Jordan Peterson would likely classify these people as intelligent ideologues, who he says are the most dangerous because they've really convinced themselves that they're right - just provide them enough of a framework for shallow understanding and it feels plausible enough to be truth, when it's only a half truth; justice dictates we look for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Trudeau is sounding and acting more and more like Hitler as time goes by [no, I am not comparing him to the full atrocities of the Nazis exterminating as many Jews as he could), and I'm not the only seeing the similarities between Trudeau and Hitler: "World-famous liberal commentator Bill Maher calls out Trudeau." - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i72czkSUsM - posted to Pierre Poilievre's YouTube account, Pierre who is now running for the Conservative party leadership after O'Toole was recently kicked out [he was incompetent the whole pandemic and why Trudeau had basically no opposition] - and he is likely to win. He's been calling out Trudeau's bullshit for years now in very clearly logical and articulate, grounded manner.
For those who aren't aware of the dire situation with how badly our Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been unreasonably infringed upon by our government the last 2 years, including not even doing the due process required if they wanted to reasonably infringe upon it - which there is a method to doing so but which then requires public debate which Trudeau loves avoiding as part of his controlling the narrative, please watch Jordan Peterson and Brian Peckford discussing our constitutional crisis, as well as Peckford's filing a lawsuit against the Federal government a few weeks ago: "Canadian Constitutional Crisis | Brian Peckford | The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast S4: E78" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdhFuMDLBDM (1+ million views since it was recorded/published Jan. 26th)
Likewise, you can also go to https://FreeNorthDeclaration.ca - where ~600 Canadian lawyers have signed, including law professors from our top universities including Queen's University - in hopes of educating Canadians that laws are being broken and due process not followed. If Canadian, please read it and ideally sign it if you care about the law.
Your homeboy is referring to the Ottawa protest, and makes his claim based on an “anonymous” tipster, e.g. he’s making shit up. Little wonder the media isn’t reporting his claim: it has no basis.
FYI, the word “illegal” doesn’t appear in the article.
I’m not super familiar with all the intricacies of firearms law in Canada, but nothing there looks like it would be illegal to own there. A few are “restricted”.
I know nothing about this specific instance beyond that article, but there are tons of situations where law enforcement seizes property without a crime being committed.
Not that the trucker protestors are right, but watching the Right and Left do a complete 180 and copy/paste each others' comments from the 2020 BLM protests is either the funniest or the saddest thing I've ever seen. It seems more and more that people only pretend to have principals so long as they can use them to advocate for their own side.
I don't think they can simply block the trade routes - surely people can route around it. In any case they protest against not being allowed into the country with their trucks, so either way the trucks wouldn't be running?
The Ambassador Bridge links Detroit to Windsor across the Detroit River at the southern tip of the Ontario Peninsula. The closest US-Canada land crossing is the Blue Water Bridge between Sarnia, ON and Port Huron, MI, 2 hours' drive north.
At least it can be rerouted. I don't know - I am not well versed in "protesting philosophy". The economic damage seems less serious, after all, the truckers could also just decide to not come to Canada to begin with. It is the mandates that make it difficult to enter that do most of the damage.
There are alleged photos of a group of them trying to set fire to an apartment complex but I'm not putting a ton of stock into those claims until they're substantiated.
Unless "the right" are posting snippets from or inspired socialist manifestos, I doubt this is the case. Many of the more disruptive BLM activists/activities wanted to change society generally - this convoy is more targeted than that.
These people are moderate libertarians, not the right. If it was the right and if they were copy/pasting from BLM it would be a violent White supremacy movement. That's just not going to happen.
I’d like to expand on some thoughts I had in another thread that provoked some interesting discussion:
If the protests are peaceful, the government should not shut them down. But at what point do the economic impacts of a protest cross a line such that they aren’t peaceful?
I personally feel that the slippery slope runs in both directions:
* The government expanding its power to block more protests is a slippery slope.
* The public expanding their power such that less people can cause more economic damage is a slippery slope.
This really seems like a situation with no good options.
To further complicate the matter, protests are completely ineffectual if they do not impact others in some way. Its easy to say that protesters should be considerate and not get in the way. But if they do that then their message is easy to ignore. Protest by nature must be civil disobedience to have any real effect.
What troubles me in this regard is that the Canadian government in general, and Trudeau in particular, seem bent on meeting the protesters with a disproportionate response. This can only lead to an escalation, not de-escalation. And has the potential to galvanize support for them. The opposite of what the Canadian government wants. Not to mention how makes them look like tyrants who trample on civil rights. Regardless of whether or not they care about that, they should care about the optics.
I disagree, the riots in America perpetrated by antifa had a significant policy shift and public opinion impact. The burning of Kenosha and other cities, was probably the only time a protest in modern history has had an effect on public policy.
But why is it ok for governments around the world destroy our economies for the past 2 years? Or rather, to destroy the SMEs, but allow corporations to carry on and even take up the slack?
I don’t think it is okay. I think protests and elections are great ways to register discontent with a state of affairs.
But should the powers of protests go so far that small groups can shut down large parts of an economy? It is my understanding that the convoy is hundreds of trucks. This is already disproportionate power for few people but what if dozens could shut down an economy peacefully?
It seems to me that a line has to be drawn somewhere for a society to function.
So, you are fine with the government shutting down the economy for years, mandating of experimental health treatments to gain access to work, etc, but you are not ok with people protesting against those decisions even when their livelihoods are at stake?
Do you realise too that Trudeau got ~30% of the vote, and that his party didn't even receive the most votes but win on account of the electoral system? IE voting every 4 years can only get you so far..
What I understood is that you were saying a line needed to be drawn, and presumably that the truck protests had crossed that line. They shouldn't be able to stop the economy.
That would be a fine argument to me, except that all the concern about the economy does not ring true, coming from a government that has shut down the economy (allowing for large corporations to continue, of course) for 2 years!
This is pretty much the first protest against those actions against the economy, but now the concern is that these protesters are acting harmfully.
Honestly, it sounds so upside-down to me! The government structure has caused huge economic harm to everyone, and then when people finally complain the government accuses them of causing economic harm! It really is perverse.
> If the protests are peaceful, the government should not shut them down. But at what point do the economic impacts of a protest cross a line such that they aren’t peaceful?
If it's not violent, it's peaceful.
Perhaps you're trying to redefine "peaceful" because you've come to the realisation that it's sometimes legitimate to shut down peaceful protests?
If someone parks their vehicle blocking the street as a protest or makes noise day and night, that's clearly nonviolent. If the state wants the protesters moved on, why can't they apply parking law or nuisance noise law?
Every protest has economic impacts, that doesn't mean it's not peaceful. I boycott Nestle in the privacy of my own home, which I hope will have a negative economic impact on them. Giving government the power to stop protests because they have economic impact would give the government the power to stop all protests.
There is a very simple solution, the government lifts the restrictions and resigns. New elections are held and then the people decide if they want a new government that will punish protesters or not.
I feel that's either an external or minority opinion.
Not everybody outside of Canada may realize we just HAD an election. I personally don't think it was necessary or useful; in fact I think it was a colossal waste of money; but we did. And Canada tends to have relatively stable governments, our period between elections tends to be reasonably lengthy. Some people may not LIKE the result of elections, but there's nothing that indicates government does not have support of majority of Canadians. Polls tend to indicate most people are Canadians about covid. And elections tend (not always) to be about majority.
Second, many outsiders and even many inside Canada don't seem to realize vast vast majority of public health policy and restrictions is done on provincial level. That includes virtually all restrictions that impact majority of citizens. Further, many if not most are done by conservative governments - Alberta and Ontario as obvious examples, as well as conservative municipal governments like Toronto.
So I never understand on any level why anybody feels "federal government to resign" is an "obvious solution", let alone what, exactly, is it meant to accomplish when it comes to covid response.
They're protesting the quarentine when re-entering the country. That's why so many Americans are involved as well. My girlfriend lives there but I can't visit her because of this.
This would encourages minorities to try and block governments all the time, to force new elections.
Why not have the second chamber of parliament made of randomly picked citizen [0] with the responsibility to approve the work of the first chamber (of elected representatives), with the power to cast motions of no confidence?
That is just one side of the slippery slope though. Assuming we took this recommendation as a rule, it seems that a convoy of truckers could organize, shut down an economy, and force an election any time they disagreed with something. This does not seem like a recipe for effective government.
No? It seems a recipe for a perfect government. Whenever X% of the population wants that much to throw down the government, that's probably a good time for a remodel.
Might not be as effective as a dictatorship or a oligarchy, sure, must a much better government to live under.
I mean, that's what elections and votes of no confidence are about. And we just HAD a fully democratic election, less than 6 months ago - which is as fresh at it gets in Canadian terms.
This is not necessarily the case where majority of population desire a federal government change, or even disagree with public health policies.
Just because these guys really Really REALLY want to "Fuck Trudeau", does not make it overall representative.
And see my other post - majority of public health policy in Canada is at provincial level, including lockdowns, masks, and majority of other restrictions. Ontario & Alberta are under conservative governments. But some people just want to see things burn and will empathize with anything that goes in that direction :)
How much of the population do you think is actively involved in the protests right now? We should bow down and throw away our government for 1% of angry people? 0.01%? This just sounds like a recipe for chaos. A middle school could topple the government by standing on Ambassador bridge just because they don't like today's lunch menu.
That’s a seductively simple idea. Using the Emergencies Act to bring to an end of the protests was unprecedented. Without having thought too deeply about it the suggestion to then call for elections seems like a brilliant one. I almost think it should be written into the act. At the surface it makes sense that if the redress of grievances is so disruptive that the Act must be invoked then the cost of invoking it is to call for elections and let the people decide.
Lifting the restrictions? The ones which are (at least in name, I am not qualified to discuss further than that) about protecting the health of the population? That seems contrary to the best interests of a nation.
And I’m expressly not saying the Canadian government picked the right response here — I don’t know if they did or didn’t — but what you’re suggesting is way too far in the other direction.
Making it the norm to resign in response to protests makes it very easy for any political opponent on any issue to do a soapbox equivalent of filibustering.
You're absolutely right that the "peacemaker" in situations like this should be a secret, anonymous, properly held elections.
However, resigning every time there is a protest, even a spectacular one, is obviously not an option for any democraticaly elected governement.
Pick a cause you defend, and a right you'd want to preserve ; browse recent history to find out when was the last time a massive protest was held by people with the opposite side of view.
Western democracies are warry of calling elections for anything but picking representatives. More direct forms of democracy would clearly help in this case.
The current scenario is that the elected governement takes harsh measure, and the people will have to wait and vote them out of office.
(Which, I believe, is a fundamental difference between most western democracy and more autocratic regimes - I'm ready to reevaluate that when there is suspense again in a russian / NK / china election.)
This is _very_ unfortunate for governements that have been recently elected and have strong parlementary majorities.
I wonder if a better "better scenario" in such crisis would be to have different level of population oversight, depending on the time scale of measures.
As in: first, the elected governement takes extraordinary measures, with relatively free reign for short period of times (days / weeks.) "Extraordinary time calling for extraordinary measures", etc...
Than, parlimentary oversight kicks in, to prolong measures in the "months" scale (I'm one of those annoying people who believe representatives have a role in democracy. Sorry.)
Than, referendum / votations need to occur for anything longer than a few months.
It would not "solve" the issue - because, a vaccine mandate might very well have been agreed by referendum in Canada, and truckers would _still_ have blocked roads. But in the grand scheme of things, I'd rather have this process.
Protestors should protest legally. They shouldn't block roads. They shouldn't break windows. They shouldn't burn buildings. When they don't they should be broken up/arrested/charged with the crimes they break. This goes for all sides.
As a general statement I agree, but there can be exceptions.
I absolutely don’t believe any of the exception I would list actually apply in this case — and even if I did I would still apply the “arrest people who break the law” part because of how fundamentally important I regard rule of law — but there are some occasions (most civil rights battles, wars for independence) where facing a conviction is worth it because the system won’t even take you seriously otherwise.
It's not really the public. It's meant to LOOK like 'the public', but it's absolutely not. It's political action, and not just intra-country political action. Maybe Canada watched what happened to the US (something they are wont to do)
>This really seems like a situation with no good options.
I think several fundamentals are wrong to start with, for example a simple definition of democracy appears to be that 51% gets to dictate the other 49%. With so many fundamental flaws even the concept of a typical protest is surreal where the person protesting is supposed to stand in harsh weather in front of a building to do so. This is not my idea of a civilized society.
I don't believe that peaceful protests EVER automatically cease to be peaceful due to economic impacts - if a peaceful protest becomes more effective due to be expensive, that's one good way to get and keep attention. Using the terrorist act's provisions for peaceful protests is a sign that the oligarchs are worried about maintaining their positions. Normal citizens in other industries should be worried.
"When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out." - Niemöller
> This really seems like a situation with no good options.
Removing the mandates is a pretty simple option. Actually, just that fact makes this invocation of the emergency act illegal. This president has gone crazy.
Is there some point at which people will start rejecting this arbitrary and excessive exercise of power?
This sets a dangerous precedent for a country that until now we considered a liberal democracy with freedom and respect for individual rights. I wonder if we're all headed to a point where state control and erosion of freedom are widely accepted by the public in our western democracies.
The Ontario government told people in Ontario that they'd need papers and a reason to travel in January 2021.
The police refused to enforce the policy restricting municipal travel. The government walked it back shortly after. That was only at a municipal level. Inter-provincial travel was limited to people with valid reasons at the same time, and that was enforced. If you went from Ontario to Manitoba to check out the moose, you'd get sent home by the police at the border.
I guess "papers, please, and where are you going?" is where the line is currently.
How do you reject the excessive exercise of power? Its very hard to say. If all it takes is the declaration of an emergency and then people accept that declaration, I don't think you can.
" Is there some point at which people will start rejecting this arbitrary and excessive exercise of power?" Well, the truckers are trying, no?
For some reason your comment reminded me of the Reichstag fire decree. It’s worth reading on, how the government used an emergency protection order to go full throat to a dictatorship..
The precedents have been set. It is okay if my guys do it, it is not okay if your guys do it. That's all there is to it. Everything else is pure rhetoric that only exists as a symbol of normality and tradition just like powerless monarchs in European countries.
Name a single “liberal democracy” where any group would be permitted to occupy a capital city for three weeks uncontested. People really aren’t grasping how weak it makes Canada look that it allowed its own capital to be held in a chokehold so easily.
There are people on the streets (and in this thread) demanding that elected officials resign while a strong majority of Canadians disagree with the “protest”.
I think it makes the Canadian government look weak and inept when it can’t come to an agreement with its own people. It does make the Canadian government look weak, but I think they lose face at home more than abroad by not working this out.
States should. A lot of their power rests on their legitimacy. They can collapse fast once that erodes.
If they cannot even keep the centre of the capital moving, seemingly ever again, the value of the currency can plummet quite quickly as people decide to move wealth into less liquid assets (or simply cash from other countries).
This seems far-fetched, but it did in the Weimar Republic too, until it became apparent it was already happening.
Edit: just to be clear I'm not saying Weiner hyperinflation resulted from a collapse in the legitimacy of the state, but moreso that collapse itself is never obvious until it's well underway.
To those falling foul of the law, they feel like the same thing.
(I agree, just pointing out that the line gets muddy depending on which side you're on. A collapse of the state can be one of the worst things imaginable, in net terms.)
None of it would be happening if the local police in Ottawa actually enforced the law. It's against the law to blockade public roads. The police leaders have not instructed front-line officers to arrest the blockaders or to tow the trucks away.
They should have never been allowed to park their big rigs in the road and set up camps, hot tubs, and a concert stage in the first place.
I hope people see this: Tamara Lich (one of the convoy protest organizers) and Brian Peckford (the last living First Minister/premiere of a province, retired in 1984 I believe, and directly helped draft our Charter of Rights and Freedoms) did a press conference yesterday - which helps explain the situation.
The convoy organizers and protestors are vast majority peaceful, and not the myriad of other lies used by Trudeau to promote hate and mislead Canadians and the world.
Edit to add: This is the 1st time Emergency Act (War Measures Act) has been invoked in Canadian history, this 100% should allowed to stay up and allow discussion on - else HN is just another place for ideological bubbles to stay coddled/sheltered - and for people to not hear the truth.
Anyone on the left should be aware they are going to use any new powers of control or punishment against the left in the the future (and more often and more significantly and increasingly so over time).
I am saying if they aren't yet freezing land defender's bank accounts, without even the need for a court order, under the Emergency Act, as per this article -- be sure they will use this precedent to do so, once they have set it, many more times against the left than the right. It sounds like you would probably agree, since you are aware they are generally much harsher against left protests/disruptions than right.
> Critics have noted that the prime minister voiced support for farmers in India who blocked major highways to New Delhi for a year in 2021, saying at the time: "Canada will always be there to defend the right of peaceful protest."
And we will keep bringing this up.
> Trudeau’s party is believed to lend passive support to the Khalistanis who have been using Canada as a strong base for decades now.
> The Canadian PM has repeatedly failed to take into account the sensitivities in India regarding support to Sikh terror groups in Canada.
> His visit to India earlier this year had made the Khalistan movement a talking point once again. During his meeting with Trudeau, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh said he had raised the issue of Khalistan. In an incident that caused further embarrassment to the Canadian premiere, Trudeau’s wife was clicked with Jaspal Atwal, a member of an illegal Sikh separatist group, who was invited to an event hosted by the Canadian High Commission.[1]
“Do what we say or we will make your lives miserable.”
This seems to be the tacit mantra of governments in the era of COVID. Alongside a willingness to entrench at the slightest pushback, in my humble opinion governments across the world have gone too far.
I completely support the right of the truckers to protest, and it would seem that the protest is upsetting the very people that it is meant to upset. I Sympathize with the people of Ottawa, and hope maybe they will come together with the truckers, but I doubt it.
The government cannot budge, the government cannot back down. Like the American government, the Canadian government knows it must fight any question to its authority because if it doesn’t, it runs the risk of losing that authority.
The truckers are going to have to break the Canadian government to win, and frankly I hope they do.
> While the government has yet to present detailed orders, Chrystia Freeland, the deputy prime minister and finance minister, said on Monday that all online fund-raising services operating in Canada, regardless of where they are based, will have to register with Canada’s financial intelligence agency, which analyzes transactions for signs of money laundering or terrorist related activity.
> Not all of them, however, are likely to comply. After the protesters were cut off by GoFundMe, they moved their appeal to GiveSendGo. When an Ontario judge last week ordered the seizure of several million dollars raised through that platform, the online service defiantly posted on Twitter that “Canada has absolutely ZERO jurisdiction over how we manage our funds.”
> But Vanessa Iafolla, a criminologist and financial crime consultant in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who studies money laundering, said that the government has a way around that. There is a long chain of companies that process the payments for all fund-raising sites. That chain, she said, eventually leads to banks and other financial institutions in Canada that are, since the emergency declaration, now required to cut off any payments to and from crowdfunding sites that choose not to follow the new emergency regulations.
I've been saying that this type of thing would be happening increasingly often. The government wants to control people's money. In the future, you will need a license to sell company shares and other private property and only the top 0.01% elite will be able to get such a license... The media will gaslight the public into thinking this is normal and 'for the public good' or to protect investors from making bad decisions.
For any law, there will always be a group of richer people just above the victimized group who will support it to protect their wealth at the expense of the poorer group. They will trick/coerce people from the lower classes into playing along. The bottom class will keep getting destroyed, one layer at a time until only the 0.01% richest people have all of what little remains of the nation's wealth... The numbers will be bigger and more concentrated than ever but the real economic value underlying those numbers will be smaller than ever because almost everyone else will be unemployed and living in the metaverse using as little energy as possible.
Maybe in the longer term, the economy won't be able to afford letting people unplug themselves from the metaverse and disconnecting their Soylent feeding tubes... The media will demonize the anti-feeding-tubers as selfish terrorists. Heck, they won't even be against feeding tubes, they will be demonized for being against the feeding tube mandates.
The best escape I can see are cryptocurrencies but it will take some time to make a transition to the extent that people are creating real value around them. It's not really the case now IMO.
Cryptocurrencies rely too heavily on infrastructure from our economic and societal systems to provide any kind of defense against economic deterioration.
- Supply of tokens is limited or otherwise is entirely predictable. In the cases where the supply is not limited, the rules for minting new coins are clear in the code and for the vast majority of cryptocurrencies, the inflation is a fixed number of tokens; meaning that the inflation expressed as a percentage drops over time so it has deflationary characteristics. If the annual inflation is 100K tokens per year, these 100k new tokens will represent a smaller percentage of the total supply as time goes by. This is very different from fiat currencies where inflation is expressed as a percentage. In fiat, 10% inflation this year represents A LOT MORE in dollar terms than 10% inflation represented 20 years ago.
- They do not rely on trusting a single government or entity. There are no single points of failure where somebody could steal funds or tamper with records.
Can we allow a small minority to shut down an economy indefinitely? That seems like a big problem.
It is also hard to gauge just how small of a minority of Canadians this is though. It feels pretty small but it is hard to tell. If 80% of Canadians are vaxxed that means this is just 5-10% of people at most.
Don't fall for the "team sport" false dichotomy - there are many who are rational enough to get vaccinated but still largely side with the "less / less broad restrictions" side of the debate.
(For instance, I am vaxxed, extremely pro-vax, and quite anti-restriction. Give everyone a chance to get vaxxed, even make it free - but then let them manage their risk from there.
Even the most effective restrictions, from a case load perspective, such as here in Australia, just left us completely naive when Omicron arrived. Shortly thereafter we had world record cases per capita.)
Are you using your truck to block the economy of Canada right now? Have you participated in the protests with your actual body in any way? Do you even live in Canada or do you represent the interests of another country entirely?
Do you eat with chopsticks? Have you participated in a blood ritual? Do you even live north of the equator or do you represent the interests of another hemisphere entirely?
Are we just asking each other preposterous questions?!
He claimed pro vax people like himself are the people protesting. How can he make such a loaded claim if a) he isn't protesting and doesn't know any pro-vaxxed protesters and b)he doesn't even live in Canada and couldn't be in the protest even if he wanted to.
At what point does peaceful protest become none-peaceful through the consequences of the protesters actions?
I.e Gluing yourself to the road could be considered peaceful however if you're doing it outside the A&E Ambulance entrance to a hospital is it still peaceful?
That's an extreme example however in this case can it still be considered peaceful considering the economic,.. etc impact on peoples lives?
The whole point of protesting is to make ppl uncomfortable. Activists take that discomfort w/the status quo & advocate for concrete policy changes…To folks who complain protest demands make others uncomfortable…that’s the point.
The post you are responding too never used the term "uncomfortable" which is a pretty watered-down term to describe someone unable to get medical service because ambulances can't get through. Would you describe murder as "uncomfortable"?
Meanwhile US media are ignoring this because … it doesn’t fit with the elites’ current goal of dumbing down the audience to a compliant masses of their own choosing.
Just because the corporate-owned media reports their cause in a negative light, doesn't mean public opinion has turned on them. In fact people were lining the streets as they made their way to Ottawa.
Subreddits are group think bubbles, i wouldn't consider that a good source of public opinion. That is like saying everyone wants Trump to be president, head over to r/thedonald.
That recent hack gave light to only 29% of total donations coming from Canadians, they are not widely supported no matter what the HN Libertarian slant wants you to believe.
Yes, I've been struck by how often the "constant honking = terrorism" claim has been made. It indicates that there is seemingly no better argument against what the truckers are doing; if there were, it would be cited instead.
I'm assuming you have never had an 18-wheeler parked outside your window honking non-stop. Terrorism isn't the right word, but that is disruptive beyond a protest.
Also "Honk Honk" has be co-opted my more extreme forces. I think we all know what "HH" stands for. But it has deniability, so it's perfect for them.
>Also "Honk Honk" has be co-opted my more extreme forces. I think we all know what "HH" stands for. But it has deniability, so it's perfect for them.
Oh, good grief. I'd sarcastically say "Yeah, right, whatever" with an OK hand sign to you, except you'd claim that that is also a "far right"/"alt right"/"Nazi"/[insert epithet here] symbol, too.
Prefect example. The Ok hand sign signals everyone it has to, remains deniable for everyone else. Don't know if you are willingly playing along with this game, but others are.
Authorisation does not equal capability. Bitcoin has no privacy so I see how use of it could be trivially tracked and punished. With a private cryptocurrency like Monero it may be feasible to do anonymous crowdfunding; recipients have various ways to cash out into usable currency albeit with significant inconvenience
While your premise is true (they're authorized to crack down on funders via crypto) your conclusion (Bitcoin doesn't fix this) doesn't follow from it. Please see my discussion in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30346082.
That only applies if you can pay everything in btc. According to coindesk, the same AML laws now apply to crypto (at least temporarily), and can be used to stop transactions from/to groups that are undesirable. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/02/15/canadas-trudeau-e...
As we saw with WikiLeaks, one thing is what the law says, and something else is what the government can actually do. In the case of WikiLeaks the government did a lot of things that the law clearly didn't permit; Bitcoin, by contrast, keeps authoritarian governments from doing undesirable things even if they pass laws that permit them.
To "freeze" my Bitcoin "account" you'd have to steal my phone and then bruteforce the PIN before I used the seed phrase to sweep the coins into a different wallet on a new phone. Not impossible by any means, but of similar difficulty to imprisoning me. I have other coins that are stored under a different seed phrase that isn't on my phone, and there are people with safer storage than that. If the government was in a position to imprison all the protestors they wouldn't be trying to target their bank accounts.
Of course centralized crowdfunding platforms and payment service providers aren't any safer than centralized banks, whether they use Bitcoin, dollars, or yuan. But your Bitcoin wallet is definitely a lot safer than your bank account from being frozen out from under you, unless it's something like a Binance account or a Coinbase account.
Generally people don't "pay everything in btc", both because of the transaction costs (33¢ in my most recent transaction, but often as high as US$8) and because not many sellers accept BTC; instead they exchange the BTC for local currencies that are more widely accepted and have lower transaction costs.
It's true that Bitcoin has privacy problems, but it doesn't have the problem where your wallet just suddenly stops working because of unlawful government action and you have no recourse. Even at privacy, it's not clear that it's worse than the banking system when your adversary is the government.
As a Canadian, I think this is shameful and a despicable act by the "leader" of our country.
But let me get one thing straight, Justin Trudeau is no leader. His actions throughout his leadership have played off as one of legacy and self-preservation. This is the same person who corrected someone from saying "mankind" with "peoplekind" while extending dinner invitations to extremists.
Four Premiers (nearly half of them) have dismissed Justin's invoking of the Act that permits him to do such things as seize personal bank accounts. The opposition parties have essentially shat all over his lack of leadership and handling of this whole mess.
The Convoy is refusing to even speak to Justin and have asked for other leaders to step into his place. That in itself should say it all.
The Emergency Act itself is being invoked inappropriately, and is essentially Justin throwing his hands up in the air saying "I don't know what I'm doing, so let's try this!"
Really the way forward is for Justin to hang his head in shame and resign, and have a more capable leader installed without resorting to the "Emergencies" Act.
The politics of this particular situation aside, this feels like a terrifying development for future protests, and public discourse in general.