All: this is a divisive topic. It's also an interesting new phenomenon. That makes it on topic for HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and also makes it vulnerable to the tedious, nasty flamewar that we're trying to avoid on HN. Therefore, if you're going to post in a thread like this, could you please review the site guidelines first and make sure to stick to them?
Note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Remember that on this site we want curious conversation. Here's an old sentence of pg's that captures the desired spirit:
Comments should be written in the spirit of colleagues cooperating in good faith to figure out the truth about something, not politicians trying to ridicule and misrepresent the other side.
It is kind of unclear, but in this case, she is not a regular government employee but rather the political staffer of a minister of the government (who in Canada is also an elected official that sits in the legislature). So this isn't like the government terminating a bureaucrat, but rather like a member of congress firing one of their staff.
I think one of the things people are forgetting lately is that civil disobedience, while a legitimate part of protest, historically has carried with it consequences. Rosa Parks was jailed. So was Martin Luther King. If you're out there trying to fight the system, you have to expect the system to fight back a little. What we're seeing in the past couple of years is this expectation that civil disobedience be easy and consequence-free. "I'll just go down to the protest, snap some pics for my insta, and then go do my laundry later in the evening." "Oh, let's fly over to the Capitol, break some windows, and then next week continue our respectable jobs as realtors like nothing happened."
I think this new batch of middle-class, suburbanite, generally older, and yes, predominantly white protestors is a little shocked to learn what other protesters in the past have known for quite a while.
Your comment has shades of "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences," which in my opinion is used to put all the responsibility onto the speakers and none on the reactions of the recipients of the message. I'm not saying your intent was to communicate that, but I feel like that's often the interpretation.
People aren't forgetting that civil disobedience means being uncomfortable, hurt, or jailed. For example, just because a protester reacts with contempt about what the mounted police did to two people doesn't mean that they were naive about the possibilities it might happen. One is a conscious, thinking awareness and the other an emotional reaction. Both can exist at the same time.
I would say "working class" instead of middle class.
I make 220k and can't afford a house without taking massive amounts of debt.
The middle class is dead in the majority of Canada. Labor is being devalued exceedingly fast. There's little reward in working hard.
What work really gives you is the ability to purchase stocks, crypto and potentially receive newly minted currency from a bank in the form of a real estate loan.
MLK wrote: "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue"
The ironic part is that the state trying to impose consequences are usually part of the tension. The more aggressive that the state responds, the more tension is created. And that eventually leads to change.
Are we at the point where jailing of Rosa Parks is somehow used to mock and chastise people who just participated or supported a civil liberties protest? This is some bizarre mental gymnastics.
I wonder if the authorities will be as quick to prosecute the leaker, who openly admits in public to breaking the law, as they are to attack the doners who have broken no laws and are entitled to privately support whatever side they choose.
This sort of highlights how the dividing mechanism works. You pick a group of people known for some fairly reasonable (asking to end mandates that have little effect given the ~90% vaccination rate anyway) and other unreasonable (blocking highways) actions, and you switch focus from the exact actions to affiliation and support.
Then you can convince the public to turn against your political enemies by framing their support for the cause as support for the unreasonable actions, ignoring any good faith intent they might have had. You double down on this by finding some fringe groups (e.g. actual neo-nazis) sharing the same identity (e.g. being white) and linking them to the person you are trying to destroy, and the public eats it up, completely ignoring the matter of the discourse.
The only way we can stop it is start distinguishing between affiliation and concrete actions. "Blocking traffic is bad" or "vaccines should be available, but not enforced if the hospitals are not overflowing" are much less divisive statements than "freedom convoy and all their supporters are bad".
Edit: funny how this comment's karma keeps swinging up and down. I guess, this take itself is somehow divisive these days. I truly wonder what stance could be accepted a fair compromise by both sides...
I wonder if there are other interesting things going on with a desire for safety. The language used of "hurt" and "healing" in some of the press conferences and the lawsuit makes it seem like the feelings police are in charge in Canada and they're going to make sure you're happy:
https://youtu.be/wZK5ixf4o7Q?t=699
In this interview with a resident of the downtown area who seems to have had to initiate legal injunctions while the police and apparently all the city authorities did nothing I am torn between sympathy for someone being inconvenienced and a sneaking feeling that an unpleasant situation is being exaggerated:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G86OL0YyHw
I was watching those after listening to the excellent Bungacast which tries to dissect the recent use of "trauma studies" to understand the evolution of the neo-liberal state under its most recent pressures https://bungacast.com/2021/12/14/231-new-class-analysis-ft-c...
Canada does not seem as though its ready to deal very minor, low-level political dissent and is incompetently defaulting to maximum authoritarianism.
Latest news seems to be that a woman was trampled and seriously injured by a police horse.
You're arguing using logic against those who, as I've said elsewhere in this thread, are fully ensconced in the red vs. blue, left vs. right, us vs. them primitive human false dichotomy.
I think this is just one example of the continued erosion of private space. We see innocuous examples in social media platforms where day to day life becomes performance, pornography where the intimate becomes a public display, twitter where otherwise passing thoughts become matters of public record, and now where private financial support of political causes can be openly used against someone.
I am envisioning a world where employees undergo regular transaction background checks to ensure that they align with their employers stated mission. Is it inevitable?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen any public signs that explicitly state “Protesting Permitted”…with that in mind, I guess any protest can be called an occupation. Some very sad times we’re living through!
Large protests routinely coordinate with police, get permits, etc. "Peaceful assembly" rights of protestors have always been in conflict with "being able to cross the sidewalk / being able to sleep at night" rights of bystanders. In most countries there are administrative processes to get permits for large demonstrations, protests, or even just getting the police to block off streets for you to use (even if the message is against the police).
I have definitely seen "parade route" signs taped to lampposts in advance in my city. Pretty sure that most large protests require permits and advance notice so that extra police can be made available, traffic can be rerouted, the protest's own route and scope can be approved. Because otherwise every protest would outdo the next to take the most disruptive form possible, so as to get maximum publicity.
In USA when the two big political organizations have their State(s) and then national convention, they have a protest / free speech zone. It's usually near where convention delegates can walk and is enclosed by a separation fence.
I don't have citations, but my understanding is that what the truckers are doing directly is illegal, but that police haven't taken action in order to avoid violence or to fuel the grievances of the protesters.
mischief is considered a criminal offence, referring to the deliberate or reckless damage of someone’s property or the act of interfering with someone’s property.
So these folks who have been camped in downtown Ottawa, and blockading bridges are in fact committing unlawful acts. And mischief is pretty well the low water mark for what some of these folks are getting charged with
>Couldn’t anyone in theory have made a donation in her name ? Or with those pieces of information if they knew them?
Sure, but while linking a person in the first place might be challenging in most donation systems, DISproving a false information donation should be fairly trivial right? While never having used it, looks like GiveSendGo uses credit/debit cards for underlying payment. That means the transaction history is well recorded and traced if you actually wish to share it. If someone was accused of using it and hadn't, they could prove it with a financial transaction list for that period, or subpoena GSG for the name on the card used or a bunch of other ways. Being in the standard financial system means everything is recorded in a centralized manner, which can be a bad thing for privacy but useful in a case like that. You can show that no money came from any account of yours.
Maybe she didn't deny it like the other person in the article? Maybe she thought the state would not fire dissidents for donating to rallies/strike blockades. It says something about Canadian labour laws.
I guess it is a culture thing. In France these kind of protests are very common.
I'd imagine there was more investigation than that. As a gov employee she may be obligated to disclose some information that might otherwise be private. Working in a law enforcement agency while sponsoring activity labelled as criminal seems a conflict of interest that's likely against her terms of employment.
That's what's reported here, but considering that it already happened maybe there's a more incriminating detail not disclosed (i.e. bank/card details)? Otherwise it would be definitely a hasty fire.
More or less, some of the organizers have been tied to xenophobic statements and political movements. Others have been tied to militias. Others are just normal people.
XKCD 1357 has long been championed by those who would quickly answer yes to both questions.
Freedom of speech is not just a legal matter, it's a principle of a free society. Once the public stops supporting it for altruistic reasons, they'll quickly find out, this process comes for you too.
We are at that point in history where your financial moves will have direct impact on your life. The small fish even, those who donate $100, are no longer too small to cancel.
This is a tragedy. Leaked, hacked data being used to fire and harass everyday people is a slippery slope that we are already slipping down.
This goes to show that the freedom convoy does represents and has support from a varied and large part of the population
Every action this government takes makes the situation more cringe... Imagine Russian government doing anything closer, it would be 24/7 TV coverage how authoritarian dictator goes against the people
The few times I've donated money to anything in the past decade or so, including to relatively uncontroversial recipients, I've done it by mailing cash in an envelope with no return address. That was partly to avoid cancellation, but also it was to avoid the recipient putting me on a donor list so they could keep hounding me for more.
In one case the recipient became controversial after I sent the cash (earlier it had only been a little bit edgy or fringey) so I'm glad that I used that approach. Not worth getting hassled over $20.
Is there a simple explanation of why these donation aggregators like GSG even exist? If I want to donate money to X, why can't I send the money directly to X instead of through an intermediary like GSG?
What is the definition of "political staffer" here?
Is that someone who is hired as an assistant by an elected politician (i.e. a spin doctor)? And in general is booted out if the someone new gets elected in. Or is it a civil servant who would stay on regardless if the politician change?
In the former case, it is understadable that you would want someone under you who shares your politics. In the latter case obviously it shouldn't take place.
Does anyone have a good link to a rundown of the situation in Ottawa and how it’s come about?
As someone somewhat out of the loop on the situation I would love to read up on what actually has happened and why. Here in the UK we have a fair bit of political controversy of our own dominating the papers so it’s not had much coverage (as far as I can see, although I may live under a rock).
Ignoring the wider issues, is this specific headline concerning or interesting? Of course they would be fired. They’re contributing money to a protest movement against their bosses that is deemed unlawful. You can’t expect to work for the government and fund a movement against that same government.
It would be like donating to BLM and then the government using emergency measures to shut down the protests like freezing bank accounts of those involved and then you lose your jobs and your accounts are frozen by the government and anyone that doesn't help the government stop the protest can be prosecuted by the government as well.
A lady in Ottawa who owned an ice cream shop was harassed because the information was leaked but in her mind she was supporting truckers that were out in the freezing weather protesting instead of working and still needed food and shelter.
People donate to protests and causes on a whim that get popular on social media all the time. I imagine a lot of people were donating to support some of the most thanklessly hard-worked people in society, truckers, that worked throughout the pandemic bringing back goods for the lucky people that could stay at home. The backgrounds of some of the initial organizers (some who are legitimate white supremacists) was not known initially and I imagine the majority still don't know and are instead protesting what they see as unnecessary mandates for truckers to get vaccinated even though they drive their trucks alone, and there's no indication that truckers are the cause of the spread of COVID.
I'm having an extremely hard time imagining people being okay with this and if you just change the protest cause just a bit I think it helps make clear why this is so dangerous.
Why not? Is everyone that works for the government supposed to hold exactly the same opinions and political leanings? If a staffer in a Republican area of the US donated to BLM and was fired, would there be a different reaction?
Hasn’t the US just gone through 6 years of protests against the government that have been a lot more violent than this, and I don’t recall anyone being fired for donating.
If the rule is you can’t use civil disobedience and be employed by the government, that rule is being unevenly applied.
[+] [-] dang|4 years ago|reply
Note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Remember that on this site we want curious conversation. Here's an old sentence of pg's that captures the desired spirit:
Comments should be written in the spirit of colleagues cooperating in good faith to figure out the truth about something, not politicians trying to ridicule and misrepresent the other side.
[+] [-] MattGaiser|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandrake|4 years ago|reply
I think this new batch of middle-class, suburbanite, generally older, and yes, predominantly white protestors is a little shocked to learn what other protesters in the past have known for quite a while.
[+] [-] nathanaldensr|4 years ago|reply
People aren't forgetting that civil disobedience means being uncomfortable, hurt, or jailed. For example, just because a protester reacts with contempt about what the mounted police did to two people doesn't mean that they were naive about the possibilities it might happen. One is a conscious, thinking awareness and the other an emotional reaction. Both can exist at the same time.
[+] [-] irthomasthomas|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waterlaw|4 years ago|reply
I make 220k and can't afford a house without taking massive amounts of debt.
The middle class is dead in the majority of Canada. Labor is being devalued exceedingly fast. There's little reward in working hard.
What work really gives you is the ability to purchase stocks, crypto and potentially receive newly minted currency from a bank in the form of a real estate loan.
You have to take a seat at the gambling table.
[+] [-] d_e_solomon|4 years ago|reply
The ironic part is that the state trying to impose consequences are usually part of the tension. The more aggressive that the state responds, the more tension is created. And that eventually leads to change.
[+] [-] romaniv|4 years ago|reply
Are we at the point where jailing of Rosa Parks is somehow used to mock and chastise people who just participated or supported a civil liberties protest? This is some bizarre mental gymnastics.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] a_shovel|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Canada|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] john_moscow|4 years ago|reply
Then you can convince the public to turn against your political enemies by framing their support for the cause as support for the unreasonable actions, ignoring any good faith intent they might have had. You double down on this by finding some fringe groups (e.g. actual neo-nazis) sharing the same identity (e.g. being white) and linking them to the person you are trying to destroy, and the public eats it up, completely ignoring the matter of the discourse.
The only way we can stop it is start distinguishing between affiliation and concrete actions. "Blocking traffic is bad" or "vaccines should be available, but not enforced if the hospitals are not overflowing" are much less divisive statements than "freedom convoy and all their supporters are bad".
Edit: funny how this comment's karma keeps swinging up and down. I guess, this take itself is somehow divisive these days. I truly wonder what stance could be accepted a fair compromise by both sides...
[+] [-] frabbit|4 years ago|reply
In this interview with a resident of the downtown area who seems to have had to initiate legal injunctions while the police and apparently all the city authorities did nothing I am torn between sympathy for someone being inconvenienced and a sneaking feeling that an unpleasant situation is being exaggerated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G86OL0YyHw
I was watching those after listening to the excellent Bungacast which tries to dissect the recent use of "trauma studies" to understand the evolution of the neo-liberal state under its most recent pressures https://bungacast.com/2021/12/14/231-new-class-analysis-ft-c...
Canada does not seem as though its ready to deal very minor, low-level political dissent and is incompetently defaulting to maximum authoritarianism.
Latest news seems to be that a woman was trampled and seriously injured by a police horse.
[+] [-] nathanaldensr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlos|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irthomasthomas|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] daenz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pupdogg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] option|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krastanov|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zuminator|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] landemva|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kkjjkgjjgg|4 years ago|reply
Has it been established that that is what it was? Serious question, I didn't follow the details closely enough.
[+] [-] 542458|4 years ago|reply
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/chec...
[+] [-] unethical_ban|4 years ago|reply
I don't have citations, but my understanding is that what the truckers are doing directly is illegal, but that police haven't taken action in order to avoid violence or to fuel the grievances of the protesters.
Is it illegal or violent to donate to them?
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] helloooooooo|4 years ago|reply
So these folks who have been camped in downtown Ottawa, and blockading bridges are in fact committing unlawful acts. And mischief is pretty well the low water mark for what some of these folks are getting charged with
[+] [-] yial|4 years ago|reply
Couldn’t anyone in theory have made a donation in her name ? Or with those pieces of information if they knew them?
[+] [-] xoa|4 years ago|reply
Sure, but while linking a person in the first place might be challenging in most donation systems, DISproving a false information donation should be fairly trivial right? While never having used it, looks like GiveSendGo uses credit/debit cards for underlying payment. That means the transaction history is well recorded and traced if you actually wish to share it. If someone was accused of using it and hadn't, they could prove it with a financial transaction list for that period, or subpoena GSG for the name on the card used or a bunch of other ways. Being in the standard financial system means everything is recorded in a centralized manner, which can be a bad thing for privacy but useful in a case like that. You can show that no money came from any account of yours.
[+] [-] rightbyte|4 years ago|reply
I guess it is a culture thing. In France these kind of protests are very common.
[+] [-] tootie|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zinekeller|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tylersmith|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kodah|4 years ago|reply
I found this source: https://globalnews.ca/news/8543281/covid-trucker-convoy-orga...
More or less, some of the organizers have been tied to xenophobic statements and political movements. Others have been tied to militias. Others are just normal people.
[+] [-] bjt2n3904|4 years ago|reply
Then there is the question: should this be done?
XKCD 1357 has long been championed by those who would quickly answer yes to both questions.
Freedom of speech is not just a legal matter, it's a principle of a free society. Once the public stops supporting it for altruistic reasons, they'll quickly find out, this process comes for you too.
[+] [-] joemazerino|4 years ago|reply
This is a tragedy. Leaked, hacked data being used to fire and harass everyday people is a slippery slope that we are already slipping down.
[+] [-] guilhas|4 years ago|reply
Every action this government takes makes the situation more cringe... Imagine Russian government doing anything closer, it would be 24/7 TV coverage how authoritarian dictator goes against the people
[+] [-] throwaway81523|4 years ago|reply
In one case the recipient became controversial after I sent the cash (earlier it had only been a little bit edgy or fringey) so I'm glad that I used that approach. Not worth getting hassled over $20.
[+] [-] tomohawk|4 years ago|reply
Are persons unknown a government agency acting as black hat hackers, or are they actually private persons.
Either way, is it right for Twitter to leave this information up?
What if it turns out to be a government agency?
How is it right for a government to make use of information obtained in this way? What about due process rights?
It's one thing for a private employer to fire an at will employee, but don't we expect our government officials to follow due process?
[+] [-] Canada|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hihihihi1234|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] throwaway81523|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway4good|4 years ago|reply
Is that someone who is hired as an assistant by an elected politician (i.e. a spin doctor)? And in general is booted out if the someone new gets elected in. Or is it a civil servant who would stay on regardless if the politician change?
In the former case, it is understadable that you would want someone under you who shares your politics. In the latter case obviously it shouldn't take place.
[+] [-] samwillis|4 years ago|reply
As someone somewhat out of the loop on the situation I would love to read up on what actually has happened and why. Here in the UK we have a fair bit of political controversy of our own dominating the papers so it’s not had much coverage (as far as I can see, although I may live under a rock).
[+] [-] mdoms|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluenose69|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] basisword|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rohitb91|4 years ago|reply
It would be like donating to BLM and then the government using emergency measures to shut down the protests like freezing bank accounts of those involved and then you lose your jobs and your accounts are frozen by the government and anyone that doesn't help the government stop the protest can be prosecuted by the government as well.
A lady in Ottawa who owned an ice cream shop was harassed because the information was leaked but in her mind she was supporting truckers that were out in the freezing weather protesting instead of working and still needed food and shelter.
People donate to protests and causes on a whim that get popular on social media all the time. I imagine a lot of people were donating to support some of the most thanklessly hard-worked people in society, truckers, that worked throughout the pandemic bringing back goods for the lucky people that could stay at home. The backgrounds of some of the initial organizers (some who are legitimate white supremacists) was not known initially and I imagine the majority still don't know and are instead protesting what they see as unnecessary mandates for truckers to get vaccinated even though they drive their trucks alone, and there's no indication that truckers are the cause of the spread of COVID.
I'm having an extremely hard time imagining people being okay with this and if you just change the protest cause just a bit I think it helps make clear why this is so dangerous.
[+] [-] briHass|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] merpnderp|4 years ago|reply
If the rule is you can’t use civil disobedience and be employed by the government, that rule is being unevenly applied.