781–790 of 849 posts
The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. In the medium to long term it's simply incompatible with any reasonable definition of freedom. Surveillance is bad enough, but a system that allows governments to arbitrarily "turn off" thousands or millions of people at the push of a button is too powerful to not be abused. Even the mere existence of such a system has a chilling effect. Which I suspect is precisel…
The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. Agreed. Recently, I came across a coffee shop and a bakery that proudly displayed "We are cashless. No cash accepted." signs. Not accepting cash is a method of discrimination. It keeps people without bank accounts out of your establishment. The overwhelming number of people without bank accounts are minorities and immigrants. That's why in some cities it is illegal…
Then you should fight the good fight of making cash great again! :P
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're talking to one right now. So let's discuss. My view is that everyone has the right to protest whenever and whatever. And you can also as part of your protest show a little bit of civil disobedience, like break a few windows, burn a fire can, chant loudly through the night keeping everyone awake, or block some roads. Something to really get people to pay attention and really listen to what you have to protest a…
I am not the person you were originally responding to, but I believe that this protest has been handled in a particularly poor way. The commercial border crossings were all opened in nonviolent fashion by the police before the emergencies act was passed. The only remaining protest, which seemed to honestly be the most effective group, was the one in Ottawa. By many accounts, they did not get anyone in government to a…
None of this is something you have to accept -- and indeed people have been protesting against laws that freeze funds that go to charities that the state argues are connected to e.g. Islamic terrorism for decades now -- but I struggle severely with what I have to assume is feigned ignorance as to why freezing funds is a part of this protest and not others.
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I think you are forgetting a few key details: 1.) You are taking a government's word for it. As a US citizen, I can tell you that you should never, ever do this. My attitude with any governing entity is to trust but verify. If they don't provide a way to verify, assume they are lying. I'm a former Department of Defense and intelligence contractor. My experience working with these entities hardened my attitude to neve…
> You are taking a government's word for it Canada is a parliamentary democracy, and the current governing party -- the ones who take all of the heat for every abuse -- are a minority government. They can fall at a moment's notice. Prime Minister in Canada isn't King, and instead is far less powerful than, for instance, the US president. Yet *not a single case has been brought forward*. A couple of Conservative MPs h…
When should their access to money be blocked?
"what-aboutism" is what we used to call equal protection under the law.
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The fact that they are so angry at these truckers they are willing to give up due process in a court of law and think it is such a good thing the government can swoop in and freeze someone’s money. I think it is very dangerous and worry some unhinged person will lose it and go from protesting to attacking. I didn’t donate to these truckers and I never participated in any protests so suppose I don’t have to worry this…
I think it's important that we draw a line in the sand about what is acceptable behaviour in society. Protesting is a right. Shutting down a city, while being fueled by disinformation networks controlled by foreign state actors, and being funded by foreign political interests, is a threat to national security. The problem is that it is very difficult to pinpoint where to draw that line of distinction... but it is som…
I am glad that didn't happen. The protests were mostly peaceful, but the fringe actors in the protest were dramatically more destructive and violent than anything in these protests. There aren't videos of violence by the truckers. I can find thousands of videos of violence by the fringe actors in the BLM protests.
Cities were shut down, entire city blocks were occupied for weeks on end with roads barricaded, police stations were burned down and/or occupied, courthouses were besieged, etc. All of these acts were perpetrated by a small percentage of the protesters.
If the Canadian logic were applied, they all would have been shut down immediately. All financing would have been frozen. Organizers would have been jailed for "mischief". Something tells me you would have been against this. I certainly would have been against it, despite the fact that I was appalled by the violence I saw. (I was in Portland in summer 2020, and couldn't believe what I saw happening at the courthouse on a nightly basis)
Regarding the foreign money/ foreign disinformation networks:
Where is the evidence of this? Do Canadians not realize this is exactly what McCarthy did in the US? Every left-wing protest was labelled, with zero precision, as being "funded by the Soviets, and based off Soviet propaganda and spy networks." Never any evidence provided, ever. Are you not aware of how blatantly obvious this tactic is? Has someone performed a survey of the truckers to find out where they are getting their information from, and whether those sources are "foreign"? You and I both know they haven't. I feel like I'm listening to a 1950's businessman in a Mad Men like hat parroting the newspaper's talking points about radicals in the East Village, or guild members on a Hollywood movie set.
I welcome you to be the first person to quantify this for me. What percentage of the funds for these protests were "foreign"? As far as I can tell, the quantity is never specified, because it's not useful for the government to specify it. Any time someone waves their hand and says "foreign money" without quantification, I view it as a manipulative tactic. I simply don't believe the foreign money is remotely significant. If it was, Freeland would have cited it to aid in persuasion for the Emergencies Act. It was more persuasive to not cite the quantity. That tells me all I need to know. It's a deliberate smear tactic, and I welcome you to provide evidence to the contrary.
The Canadian news media landscape is incredibly broken. I thought it was bad in the US, but it's worse up there. To me, Trudeau is remarkably similar to George W Bush:
Mediocre intelligence
Charismatic and charming
Sailed along on his father's reputation with virtually zero career aspirations for most of his life
Views dissent as unpatriotic
Beholden to a fringe religion/ideology that is dominant in his political party but not outside of it
Mobilizes swings in public opinion to "temporarily" remove civil liberties
Excellent article and one that I wish my friends would read. Recently on a hike I mentioned how upsetting Trudeau’s actions are, and none of my friends had any idea what was happening up in Canada, except someone talked about a few things that I don’t believe are true: truckers were violent, few Canadians supported them, etc. - I think those things are not true. As other people here have pointed out, cashless society…
I doubt many truckers were violent, but the truckers weren't the only one there. Their presence created a center of gravity that attracted many hangers-on, and from what I have seen, they've been the source of most of the problems.
Also, it's not really about violence. It's about needlessly harming innocent citizens. Although this is happening right near Parliament, it's one of the poorest wards in the city. This isn't a neighbourhood full of the liberal elite sipping lattes while they work from home. It's students, and shift works, and retail workers just trying to live their lives.
Consider things like this: https://twitter.com/glen_mcgregor/status/1488905393199890432
Turn your sound on/up to get a sense of what that was like. Do you want to live in a society where that is ever okay in the name or protest? I sure don't.
And that was filmed from a building a couple of hundred meters away from the trucks that were parked up Kent St. How do you think it felt for people living in these apartments right on Kent:
https://www.google.ca/maps/@45.4168826,-75.7005369,3a,75y,10...
For what it's worth (and I realize it's a small sample of a small portion of the population, so maybe it's not worth much), my friends in neighbours in my small Ontario town were initially generally supportive of what they saw as the truckers' core message, because "it's time to end vaccine mandates for truckers re-entering Canada" is a completely reasonable topic of protests. It's a good time to have that conversation.
But the protest quickly evolved into something larger and messier than that core message, and sentiment in my small town quickly soured against the protest. What I've heard is recent conversations is that people feel the protest had lost the plot, the actions of some of the attendees in harming local citizens were beyond the pale, and it was time for the protest to end.
There have been some objections to the way police ended the protest, but it looked relatively tame in comparison to other protest breakups here in recent memory like the Toronto homeless camps last summer, or the Montreal student protests, or the G20 protests. That's not to say it was done perfectly.
I used to live a few blocks from Parliament Hill, and everybody living there is used to protests. We think protests are good and healthy and even necessary, even if we disagree with the protestors. This one quickly evolved into something beyond mere protest and turned residents against the protest who might otherwise have been sympathetic to its message.
For some of the grievances local residents have, see lists like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/onguardforthee/comments/sh7qok/a_su...
Lists like that are, of course, one-sided. It's up to you how much of that information you choose to see as credible. Just realize that as someone from outside Canada, you're probably seeing a filtered version of events. That list above is also a filtered version of events, but it's a very different filter. Look at it through enough filters and you'll probably end up with a more complete understanding.
Personally, I watched some of the live streams to learn more about the protests and hear from some of the actual truckers. Danny and Czaba and the couple from Saskatchewan with the puppies seemed like good people with legitimate grievances to protest about. At the same time, no amount of goodness makes the harm caused to local residents okay. I know it's easy to come down strongly on one side or the other of this, but I see the whole thing as a crappy tragedy for everyone involved.
As for the government's response to all of this - we'll have plenty of opportunities to voice our opinion at the ballot box. Municipal and Provincial governments should have been able to manage this protest from the start without needing the feds to step in, and we have municipal and provincial elections this year. And with a minority government federally, we could have an election there at any time as well. Realistically it's unlikely we'll see one before next year - but we'll still get to express ourselves soon enough.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you are forgetting a few key details: 1.) You are taking a government's word for it. As a US citizen, I can tell you that you should never, ever do this. My attitude with any governing entity is to trust but verify. If they don't provide a way to verify, assume they are lying. I'm a former Department of Defense and intelligence contractor. My experience working with these entities hardened my attitude to neve…
As a Canadian it’s like living with a bunch of lunatics and I can not believe so many people are okay with this. All I can say is I will never miss an election again. We need Trudeau gone badly but he has a lot of support from the east and no other party is positioned to beat him in an election. The ndp have sided with him on so many things I can no longer vote for them and the choices are limited.
He speaks in this syrupy, soothing voice that makes me think I'm listening to NPR (it's the public news radio here in the states, infamous for its sleep inducing qualities). But that NPR voice is saying incredibly misleading, demagogue-like statements that are the hallmark of authoritarian leanings. It's almost preferable if someone who sounds like Trump says he's going to implement a program to freeze bank accounts with no court review, because at least you expect it from a guy who speaks like a dictator. With Trudeau, it's like the optics of his appearance and demeanor blind a large subset of the population to what he's actually doing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not the person you were originally responding to, but I believe that this protest has been handled in a particularly poor way. The commercial border crossings were all opened in nonviolent fashion by the police before the emergencies act was passed. The only remaining protest, which seemed to honestly be the most effective group, was the one in Ottawa. By many accounts, they did not get anyone in government to a…
> killing peoples' pets Citation needed.
> The government’s action is troubling enough, but what should really disturb us is the ease and invisibility with which it is being done. This is such a great point. I'm not sure why it needs to be made over and over again, but it seems that's the only way it doesn't get buried. Let's play a game. I will be the institution, you will be the person. You will get ability to record me with your cellphone and post stuff…
The Emergencies Act does not allow the government to violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It must also be agreed to by the provinces. It's use has a fixed duration and scope of action. It was designed to prevent executive over-reach while still allowing the government, at the federal level, to respond to unprecedented situations that require it.
Everyone who was arrested at the illegal occupation is being given the same rights and freedoms everyone gets in this country. The accounts and crypto wallets being frozen and seized are those that belong to people organizing and funding the occupation. Everyone arrested is getting their day in court.
I've been involved in many peaceful protests and am not afraid that the Canadian government is suddenly going to arresting people without giving them a court hearing and freezing the assets of dissidents. That would be in violation of our laws and I suspect our democracy is strong enough that anyone trying to get away with that... wouldn't be able to.