That includes not posting flamewar comments, not calling names, not crossing into personal attack, not being snarky, and not using the thread for political or ideological battle. You can make your substantive points without any of that, and we want curious conversation here.
I've seen a lot of commentary about the fact that the Emergencies Act provisions "expire" automatically after 30 days, and include "safeguards", ergo there's nothing worry about. People getting hung up on the text of the bill forget that it's merely an Act of Parliament, and thus can easily be amended or replaced via a simple majority vote.
What played out last night indicates that none of these checks and balances really matter in a parliamentary system where the nuclear option of a non-confidence vote (and subsequent election) can be invoked to force any MPs with qualms to vote along party lines.
It's easy to see what will happen next, based on this government's track record: they will introduce amendments to the Act, or new legislation containing only the provisions they would like to make permanent, and once again proclaim that voting against the amendment will result in a new election.
They will probably also use it as an excuse to ram through their "Online Harms Bill", i.e. internet censorship, targeted at "misinformation" (disagreeable speech) and, many suspect, independent media outlets that the PM despises.
Internet censorship + government-directed financial de-platforming = Canada's near-term future if the situation doesn't change somehow.
What better check and balance to automatically topple of the government if you really disagree with invoking the act? It's a minority government even.
I suspect most people commenting haven't even read the act. It's actually very short and would take you less time than reading this article. One should entirely get hung up on the text of the act -- it outlines exactly what is possible and the consequences. It's actually very reasonable but point that out doesn't produce enough outrage up votes or get articles published.
I consider the worst part to be that many Canadians (particularly the educated) seem to be fine this is happening, or even openly advocating for it. This more than anything else makes me very concerned about how Canada navigates the next little while.
What amazes me is that you can pass a measure that strips the rights of the citizens with less than a super majority of 2/3 or even 3/4. This is a mockery of democracy.
> proclaim that voting against the amendment will result in a new election.
This is the expected behaviour and boon of having minority governments. When the government does something Canada doesn't like, a new election gets called
Shouldn't it be illegal for a political party to force any MP vote on any matter? The MP was voted in to represent the people, not the political party.
I guess it's a race to the bottom and impossible to prevent coercion. I just wish there was a better way.
Occupy Wall Street was started by a group of organized Canadians and they blocked access to NYSE facilities. OWS was obviously an occupation (it’s right there in the name), but the better question is: was OWS a protest, too? If so, why can’t this be called one as well?
There are generally more parallels between OWS and the truckers than people are willing to recognize, because there’s been a hell of an inversion: if you supported OWS 10 years ago you probably don’t like the truckers today and if you like the truckers you probably weren’t for OWS 10 years ago. There are a handful of Tim Pools that like both, and there are elites that disliked both, but the average person has to do some gymnastics.
All that I ask is that everyone is consistent: if OWS is a protest, then this is too. If you don’t like that Americans funded the truckers, you have to be willing to call out that OWS took place in NYC but formed from a Canadian nonprofit.
> In particular, it was about giving the government of Canada the permanent power to freeze, without trial or legal recourse, all the bank accounts and other assets of anyone it decides was ‘directly or indirectly involved’ in an ‘illegal protest.’
Is this actually true? According to [0] "The Declaration expires after 30 days unless an extension is confirmed within specific timelines by both the House of Commons and the Senate.". I don't see how this would grant the government permanent powers unless the Emergencies Act gets renewed in perpetuity.
While I generally agree with the alarm raised by this article, I find it does itself a disservice by exaggerating and citing to Americans with, charitably, a passing understanding of Canadian law and government.
If people would like a dispassionate/neutral reading of the legal obligations imposed by the invocation of the Emergencies Act, I can recommend:
- a summary by Osler, a prestigious Canadian law firm [1]
- the order itself [2]
- the regulations themselves [3]
They are bad enough on their own without embellishment.
For additional context, I have never voted for the Liberal party. Federally, I have donated to and voted for Conservative and Green candidates my entire life. My current MP (a Green MP), voted against the Emergencies Act. I approved of that vote. But it is just absolutely bizarre to me to see people comparing Trudeau to Hitler, Stalin and Mao, as is done in the punk6529 Twitter thread that is embedded in this article. There is plenty to criticize without undermining yourself by using these stupidly emotive comparisons.
Does that really matter though? The people whose bank accounts have been frozen won't automatically get their accounts back after 30 days, will they?
(And even if they do, 30 days is still a really long time not to have access to money, aside from whatever cash you happened to have on you at the time.)
Like how the USA's PATRIOT Act was supposed to sunset after 3 years but has been extended every 3 years forever? Canada isn't the USA but it's not that different.
> I don't see how this would grant the government permanent powers unless the Emergencies Act gets renewed in perpetuity.
Label any protest you don't like an "illegal protest". Then as long as there's less than one such protest every 30 days, it's not "permanent"... Yet it is.
>Is this actually true? According to [0] "The Declaration expires after 30 days unless an extension is confirmed within specific timelines by both the House of Commons and the Senate.". I don't see how this would grant the government permanent powers unless the Emergencies Act gets renewed in perpetuity.
This is true. They have frozen the bank accounts of hundreds and you cannot do anything about it. You never got due process, there is no redress from the courts because you dont have a bank account to hire a lawyer.
Any power given to government will be abused by them. It's sad that many Canadians support these clearly dangerous and totalitarian actions from their "leader".
Did you notice how "freedom" became a swear word over the last 5-6 years? With all these "muh freedoms", "what exact freedom have you lost?", "freedom of speech don't protect you from anything" it seems like any movement that fights for any "freedom" will be labeled as terrorist/nazi in next few years.
History repeats itself, and I'm sick of it. My country of origin and my country where I grew up, both turned to totalitarian hellholes, and now it's Canada's turn.
>Did you notice how "freedom" became a swear word over the last 5-6 years?
Because it's about "freedom" and not freedom.
Remember when the US called french fries freedom fries because France wasn't part of the coalition of the willing?
That's the same freedom.
Freedom also means responsibility, but some just want to do what ever they want and as soon as somebody demands from them to take responsibility they cry freedom.
People were drafted in wars and got killed and these guys whine about some pokes.
I want my freedom too but these guys showed me that that will never happen. I underestimated the number of stupid people.
> Any power given to government will be abused by them.
This assertion that the government cannot do anything good, by virtue of being the government, is kinda why the kids gloves are coming off between the Canadian government and these protestors.
What exactly should the government response be to a group of people who demand the entire government be thrown out, and are going to ruin the majority of the populations lives until it happens? Are they supposed to sit there and accept that they’re a naughty little government who can never do anything right so they need to be quiet and go away?
It has become a pejorative precisely because it has been bandied about stupidly by people who aren't always arguing in good faith. At best, it's often invoked in an unsophisticated manner that assumes that individual freedom supersedes any other public good--i.e. during Covid.
In the American context, there's also a lot of hypocrisy on the right in terms of using that word, e.g. celebrating post 911 stuff like The Patriot Act and No Fly lists and Guantanamo, not caring about the conditions of immigration detention, but then bitching about having to wear cloth on one's face sometimes. Right-wingers literally cheered Joe Arpaio saying he runs concentration camps. So long as great atrocities befall minorities, they don't care. If they get minorly inconvenienced --> somehow it's a big deal.
I'd say more, but it's hard to discuss properly on phone. I would say there are reasonable libertarian concerns about this bill and Covid policies and a bunch of other stuff, but if you're wondering why so many of us reflexively distrust such arguments, you have to look at the cultural and political context in which we grew up. You're not seeing the full picture, to say the least.
This is the risk in protesting. Authorities have never been nice to protestors. Protesting has always carried the risk of assault and the loss of livelihood, wealth, freedom, or life. So before protesting, you need to ask yourself if what your protesting for is worth it.
The state is fucking powerful. After all, the state is the one in charge of checking the state's power. If you piss off enough people, or merely the wrong people, you may discover that your rights only extend so far as other people are willing to protect them. The difference here is that most protestors are punished via ass-kicking, seizure of personal belongings, a few nights being humiliated in a jail cell, and a bunch of fines.
The people whose lives were interrupted by this are pissed off and out for blood. And Trudeau is going to give it to them, and be heralded as a hero while doing so. Especially after the perceived police incompetence in the matter (by failing to dole out the standard ass-kicking-jail-fine punishment).
I live in Ottawa. This was not a protest, it was an 21 day occupation, blocking the city core and removing citizen's ability to sleep in their own homes due to the constant excessive noise, (often at ear-damaging levels) or leave without harassment. Businesses in the area could not open.
So to compare these occupiers with typical protestors does not make sense. Talking with other locals, the last time someone could remember a non-peaceful protest in Ottawa was around the beginning of the Iraq war, aside from when about a dozen BLM protestors occupied a single intersection overnight and were all arrested on day 2 of their attempt to keep the intersection shut down.
This comment is weird, it appears to be a rehashing of the populist argument "If you go against the majority then you deserve whatever happens to you", as an atheist living in a majority-muslim intolerant country, that's familiar.
And the kinds of people who say this are familiar too. They perceive themselves to be part of the majority (Or the "Right Side Of History", in other imaginations), they think it will never turn against them or - for that matter - that the people they're oppressing will never return the unpleasant favor and gang on them back.
All those countless centuries of history and people still haven't fully grasped that Power and Oppression are completely symmetric tools, totally blind to the identities of those wielding them or those they're used against. The tyranny you so gleefully cheer now is going to turn against you (or an equivalent one will be constructed by the ones you oppressed one day and used against you) and you won't be laughing then.
True but people should be able to protest and make politicians uncomfortable, which is what happened here. If we can't hear the other side, we go down quickly.
>This is the risk in protesting. Authorities have never been nice to protestors. Protesting has always carried the risk of assault and the loss of livelihood, wealth, freedom, or life. So before protesting, you need to ask yourself if what your protesting for is worth it.
This act has never been used before, it's predecessor was used only during serious war. This act being used against legitimate protest and then going forward banning all protest?
Like say you want to protest the government based on one side of the Ukraine war? You can't, that's illegal.
Say you want to go cover those illegal protests and report on it as a journalist? That's illegal.
>Especially after the perceived police incompetence in the matter (by failing to dole out the standard ass-kicking-jail-fine punishment).
The police couldn't touch the protest for weeks not because of inaction but because your right to protest is a human right. They required the national emergency to remove our right to protest in order to label the protest illegal.
Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see any references to any specific incidences or examples of a person having their accounts frozen for simply donating to the protest. Can anyone provide a reliable source of this happening? Since it's the whole point of the alarmism in the article it seems an important thing to establish.
This article https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2022/02/21/convoy-protesters-b... isn't quite a debunking but certainly throws some cold water on this claim. Although it's not really explicitly claimed in the article that this is actually happening, just strongly implied. I wonder if that is intentional.
I've been very anti-cryptocurrency/anti-blockchain for years now. I'm still skeptical of them (possibly more due to their current implementations and the fanboy-ism that surrounds them), but this absolutely convinced me that we need non-custodial financial instruments. (Maybe that isn't crypto/blockchain stuff, who knows. Physical cash is annoying to deal with, though.)
However, the problem is that you still need to convert this "uncontrollable" currency into fiat currency. At the very least, you need to pay your taxes. But if the governments decide that non-custodial currency is illegal, then everything from grocery stores to web hosts won't risk accepting anything but government-approved currency. Sure, we'll have black markets where people can convert things to fiat, but those will be expensive and risky.
So I still don't see blockchain as a savior here. If the government can give themselves the power to freeze people's custodial assets on a whim, they can also make it illegal to deal in bitcoin or whatever. And I'm skeptical that this is the kind of issue that can be boiled down into easy-to-understand bits in order to generate a lot of public support. Blockchain already has an image problem, being full of "bros" and undeserved millionaires/billionaires. Most people are not going to put their political support behind this without a huge shift.
Emergency powers that suspend fundamental civil liberties without judicial oversight are, in a democracy, only justifiable in times of an existential crisis of the nation. One can hardly see how the trucker protests qualify as such.
You will undoubtedly be told to not believe your lying eyes. You will hear people describing protesters who didn't so much as throw a pebble at police or anyone else called terrorists, white supremacists, insurrectionists, etc. This is a calculated effort to change the meaning of words (again) in service of eliminating the basis of law in the West: individual freedom.
Emergency powers passed by a simple majority is also ridiculous. How come it’s not 2/3 or 3/4. So if you have a majority in parliament feel free to just declare emergencies at your leisure?
> One can hardly see how the trucker protests qualify as such
There are multiple facets to the protests.
- Blocking the bridge that was responsible for a sizeable percentage of trade between US and Canada goes far beyond a protest and any government would be well within their right to classify this as an emergency.
- You had US-based, armed, ultra-right wing militia elements who weren't trying to protest at all but rather sow discord. These were the types wanting to overthrow the government. Which meant that police weren't able to control the situation and there were legitimate concerns about it getting out of hand.
This sort of stuff just has the same effect that the mandates did in the first place.
Congratulations, now you've made it such that it would be _irresponsible_ for me to not keep a large amount of savings outside of the financial system.
I live in the downtown area of Ottawa and found the protests to be annoying but respected their right to do so. It's strange seeing the hyperbole that pops up in the news contradicting what you can see with your own eyes outside.
I have to go through police checkpoints to get to my home. I'm dealing with political divisions ripping through my friends and family right now. I'm scared of how this is pushing us to more centralized, unchecked, and unjust power in the hands of government.
Maybe it's just me, but it doesn't seem like that much to require that:
> A person must not participate in a public assembly that may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace by:
>
> (a) the serious disruption of the movement of persons or goods or the serious interference with trade;
> (b) the interference with the functioning of critical infrastructure; or
> (c) the support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property.
I think it's possible to respect that approach, but still be mad as hell and get your point across.
Another reason to have decentralisation in financial system. I'm not for cryptocurrency but this excess in democratic state is exactly what brings people to alternatives, ie Bitcoin.
By the 2020’s western state power is no longer exercised through employment of a physical law enforcement corps. The middle class is sufficiently controlled by a centralized financial structure, but the social protection capacity of the state has become overwhelmed by both the numbers of the underclass and the wealth of the overclass. This is often presented as an intentional political position, but it should be easy to see that this was just a pragmatic alignment with the inevitable reality. A pandemic pushes the state into a position to assert absolute power, and a series of protests arise to test that power, while investors enter a mania for alternative financial systems. The differences in response to the various threats to state power raise the ultimate question of this learning unit: Is there such a thing as a power based on and constrained by the consent of the governed, or is a government only legitimized by its ability to exert and retain power in the form of control over the governed?
There are communities that live without access to the banking system already. Many of them do so from a philosophy of independence (in the old sense, they wish to limit their reliance on things outside their community).
Certainly some of their methods will be of great interest to the unpersons, perhaps some of the philosophy will be more appealing too.
The same exact thing happened after 15 July 2016 (Erdogan staged a coup attempt on his own) in Turkey. To put it simply it was the beginning of the genocide of peaceful Gulen movement members or anyone who had any kind of connection with them in the past.
The bank that I had account + credit card was shut down (stolen by Turkish state) with the decree laws. My brother had an additional account in another bank. That bank terminated his account and credit card using decree laws as a reason, no court order.
We lost our jobs, money and freedom in a single night. Our company was shut down by the state without due process. My relatives, friends and colleagues got jailed and tortured by Turkish police and soldiers. We got fired and almost none of us were able to get employment (we got work permits revoked) code 36 (fired due to decree laws) is on social insurance records. University degrees of some of us cancelled by the decree law. There are thousands of things I want to tell but it is too long. At the end my brother became a permanent resident in Canada via asylum and I am an asylum seeker in Greece (decisions take way long here). My relatives and friends still in jail in Turkey.
To put it simply, what Canadian government is planning right now is a clear way to go for genocide. Killing people economically is a part of genocide method (don't ask me where I know it).
[+] [-] dang|4 years ago|reply
That includes not posting flamewar comments, not calling names, not crossing into personal attack, not being snarky, and not using the thread for political or ideological battle. You can make your substantive points without any of that, and we want curious conversation here.
[+] [-] cal5k|4 years ago|reply
What played out last night indicates that none of these checks and balances really matter in a parliamentary system where the nuclear option of a non-confidence vote (and subsequent election) can be invoked to force any MPs with qualms to vote along party lines.
It's easy to see what will happen next, based on this government's track record: they will introduce amendments to the Act, or new legislation containing only the provisions they would like to make permanent, and once again proclaim that voting against the amendment will result in a new election.
They will probably also use it as an excuse to ram through their "Online Harms Bill", i.e. internet censorship, targeted at "misinformation" (disagreeable speech) and, many suspect, independent media outlets that the PM despises.
Internet censorship + government-directed financial de-platforming = Canada's near-term future if the situation doesn't change somehow.
[+] [-] wvenable|4 years ago|reply
I suspect most people commenting haven't even read the act. It's actually very short and would take you less time than reading this article. One should entirely get hung up on the text of the act -- it outlines exactly what is possible and the consequences. It's actually very reasonable but point that out doesn't produce enough outrage up votes or get articles published.
[+] [-] ayngg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gorwell|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sparrish|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] christkv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 8note|4 years ago|reply
This is the expected behaviour and boon of having minority governments. When the government does something Canada doesn't like, a new election gets called
[+] [-] verisimi|4 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...
This is to say that 'states of emergency' can be renewed..... forever....
[+] [-] srcreigh|4 years ago|reply
I guess it's a race to the bottom and impossible to prevent coercion. I just wish there was a better way.
[+] [-] nickysielicki|4 years ago|reply
There are generally more parallels between OWS and the truckers than people are willing to recognize, because there’s been a hell of an inversion: if you supported OWS 10 years ago you probably don’t like the truckers today and if you like the truckers you probably weren’t for OWS 10 years ago. There are a handful of Tim Pools that like both, and there are elites that disliked both, but the average person has to do some gymnastics.
All that I ask is that everyone is consistent: if OWS is a protest, then this is too. If you don’t like that Americans funded the truckers, you have to be willing to call out that OWS took place in NYC but formed from a Canadian nonprofit.
[+] [-] barbazoo|4 years ago|reply
Is this actually true? According to [0] "The Declaration expires after 30 days unless an extension is confirmed within specific timelines by both the House of Commons and the Senate.". I don't see how this would grant the government permanent powers unless the Emergencies Act gets renewed in perpetuity.
[0] https://www.canada.ca/en/department-justice/news/2022/02/can...
[+] [-] cldellow|4 years ago|reply
While I generally agree with the alarm raised by this article, I find it does itself a disservice by exaggerating and citing to Americans with, charitably, a passing understanding of Canadian law and government.
If people would like a dispassionate/neutral reading of the legal obligations imposed by the invocation of the Emergencies Act, I can recommend:
- a summary by Osler, a prestigious Canadian law firm [1]
- the order itself [2]
- the regulations themselves [3]
They are bad enough on their own without embellishment.
For additional context, I have never voted for the Liberal party. Federally, I have donated to and voted for Conservative and Green candidates my entire life. My current MP (a Green MP), voted against the Emergencies Act. I approved of that vote. But it is just absolutely bizarre to me to see people comparing Trudeau to Hitler, Stalin and Mao, as is done in the punk6529 Twitter thread that is embedded in this article. There is plenty to criticize without undermining yourself by using these stupidly emotive comparisons.
[1]: https://www.osler.com/en/blogs/risk/february-2022/new-emerge...
[2]: https://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2022/2022-02-15-x1/html/s...
[3]: https://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2022/2022-02-15-x1/html/s...
[+] [-] kelnos|4 years ago|reply
(And even if they do, 30 days is still a really long time not to have access to money, aside from whatever cash you happened to have on you at the time.)
[+] [-] jorgesborges|4 years ago|reply
[0] https://mobile.twitter.com/ezralevant/status/149485205614596...
[+] [-] dblohm7|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_1_of_the_Canadian_Char...
[+] [-] superkuh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TacticalCoder|4 years ago|reply
Label any protest you don't like an "illegal protest". Then as long as there's less than one such protest every 30 days, it's not "permanent"... Yet it is.
[+] [-] sleepingadmin|4 years ago|reply
This is true. They have frozen the bank accounts of hundreds and you cannot do anything about it. You never got due process, there is no redress from the courts because you dont have a bank account to hire a lawyer.
[+] [-] _3u10|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] stronglikedan|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] stackedinserter|4 years ago|reply
Did you notice how "freedom" became a swear word over the last 5-6 years? With all these "muh freedoms", "what exact freedom have you lost?", "freedom of speech don't protect you from anything" it seems like any movement that fights for any "freedom" will be labeled as terrorist/nazi in next few years.
History repeats itself, and I'm sick of it. My country of origin and my country where I grew up, both turned to totalitarian hellholes, and now it's Canada's turn.
[+] [-] croes|4 years ago|reply
Because it's about "freedom" and not freedom. Remember when the US called french fries freedom fries because France wasn't part of the coalition of the willing? That's the same freedom.
Freedom also means responsibility, but some just want to do what ever they want and as soon as somebody demands from them to take responsibility they cry freedom.
People were drafted in wars and got killed and these guys whine about some pokes. I want my freedom too but these guys showed me that that will never happen. I underestimated the number of stupid people.
[+] [-] lovich|4 years ago|reply
This assertion that the government cannot do anything good, by virtue of being the government, is kinda why the kids gloves are coming off between the Canadian government and these protestors.
What exactly should the government response be to a group of people who demand the entire government be thrown out, and are going to ruin the majority of the populations lives until it happens? Are they supposed to sit there and accept that they’re a naughty little government who can never do anything right so they need to be quiet and go away?
[+] [-] ss108|4 years ago|reply
In the American context, there's also a lot of hypocrisy on the right in terms of using that word, e.g. celebrating post 911 stuff like The Patriot Act and No Fly lists and Guantanamo, not caring about the conditions of immigration detention, but then bitching about having to wear cloth on one's face sometimes. Right-wingers literally cheered Joe Arpaio saying he runs concentration camps. So long as great atrocities befall minorities, they don't care. If they get minorly inconvenienced --> somehow it's a big deal.
I'd say more, but it's hard to discuss properly on phone. I would say there are reasonable libertarian concerns about this bill and Covid policies and a bunch of other stuff, but if you're wondering why so many of us reflexively distrust such arguments, you have to look at the cultural and political context in which we grew up. You're not seeing the full picture, to say the least.
[+] [-] mywittyname|4 years ago|reply
The state is fucking powerful. After all, the state is the one in charge of checking the state's power. If you piss off enough people, or merely the wrong people, you may discover that your rights only extend so far as other people are willing to protect them. The difference here is that most protestors are punished via ass-kicking, seizure of personal belongings, a few nights being humiliated in a jail cell, and a bunch of fines.
The people whose lives were interrupted by this are pissed off and out for blood. And Trudeau is going to give it to them, and be heralded as a hero while doing so. Especially after the perceived police incompetence in the matter (by failing to dole out the standard ass-kicking-jail-fine punishment).
[+] [-] tekstar|4 years ago|reply
So to compare these occupiers with typical protestors does not make sense. Talking with other locals, the last time someone could remember a non-peaceful protest in Ottawa was around the beginning of the Iraq war, aside from when about a dozen BLM protestors occupied a single intersection overnight and were all arrested on day 2 of their attempt to keep the intersection shut down.
[+] [-] Banana699|4 years ago|reply
And the kinds of people who say this are familiar too. They perceive themselves to be part of the majority (Or the "Right Side Of History", in other imaginations), they think it will never turn against them or - for that matter - that the people they're oppressing will never return the unpleasant favor and gang on them back.
All those countless centuries of history and people still haven't fully grasped that Power and Oppression are completely symmetric tools, totally blind to the identities of those wielding them or those they're used against. The tyranny you so gleefully cheer now is going to turn against you (or an equivalent one will be constructed by the ones you oppressed one day and used against you) and you won't be laughing then.
[+] [-] tistoon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomp|4 years ago|reply
Suppress people's rights & freedoms for long enough until they revolt, then call them violent terrorists and suppress them a bit more.
[+] [-] desireco42|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sleepingadmin|4 years ago|reply
This act has never been used before, it's predecessor was used only during serious war. This act being used against legitimate protest and then going forward banning all protest?
Like say you want to protest the government based on one side of the Ukraine war? You can't, that's illegal.
Say you want to go cover those illegal protests and report on it as a journalist? That's illegal.
>Especially after the perceived police incompetence in the matter (by failing to dole out the standard ass-kicking-jail-fine punishment).
The police couldn't touch the protest for weeks not because of inaction but because your right to protest is a human right. They required the national emergency to remove our right to protest in order to label the protest illegal.
[+] [-] radu_floricica|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] weeblewobble|4 years ago|reply
This article https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2022/02/21/convoy-protesters-b... isn't quite a debunking but certainly throws some cold water on this claim. Although it's not really explicitly claimed in the article that this is actually happening, just strongly implied. I wonder if that is intentional.
[+] [-] kelnos|4 years ago|reply
However, the problem is that you still need to convert this "uncontrollable" currency into fiat currency. At the very least, you need to pay your taxes. But if the governments decide that non-custodial currency is illegal, then everything from grocery stores to web hosts won't risk accepting anything but government-approved currency. Sure, we'll have black markets where people can convert things to fiat, but those will be expensive and risky.
So I still don't see blockchain as a savior here. If the government can give themselves the power to freeze people's custodial assets on a whim, they can also make it illegal to deal in bitcoin or whatever. And I'm skeptical that this is the kind of issue that can be boiled down into easy-to-understand bits in order to generate a lot of public support. Blockchain already has an image problem, being full of "bros" and undeserved millionaires/billionaires. Most people are not going to put their political support behind this without a huge shift.
[+] [-] hpkuarg|4 years ago|reply
Very disappointing to see.
[+] [-] nathanaldensr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] christkv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] threeseed|4 years ago|reply
There are multiple facets to the protests.
- Blocking the bridge that was responsible for a sizeable percentage of trade between US and Canada goes far beyond a protest and any government would be well within their right to classify this as an emergency.
- You had US-based, armed, ultra-right wing militia elements who weren't trying to protest at all but rather sow discord. These were the types wanting to overthrow the government. Which meant that police weren't able to control the situation and there were legitimate concerns about it getting out of hand.
[+] [-] throwaway22032|4 years ago|reply
Congratulations, now you've made it such that it would be _irresponsible_ for me to not keep a large amount of savings outside of the financial system.
[+] [-] eth0up|4 years ago|reply
This is a new precedent. Expect it to proliferate, with virulence.
I'm sure others will be addressing the subject of social credit.
[+] [-] loufe|4 years ago|reply
I have to go through police checkpoints to get to my home. I'm dealing with political divisions ripping through my friends and family right now. I'm scared of how this is pushing us to more centralized, unchecked, and unjust power in the hands of government.
[+] [-] ipaddr|4 years ago|reply
Canada has dropped many rankings on the democracy scale.
[+] [-] barelysapient|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickspacek|4 years ago|reply
Maybe it's just me, but it doesn't seem like that much to require that:
> A person must not participate in a public assembly that may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace by: > > (a) the serious disruption of the movement of persons or goods or the serious interference with trade; > (b) the interference with the functioning of critical infrastructure; or > (c) the support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property.
I think it's possible to respect that approach, but still be mad as hell and get your point across.
[+] [-] t0bia_s|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jl2718|4 years ago|reply
By the 2020’s western state power is no longer exercised through employment of a physical law enforcement corps. The middle class is sufficiently controlled by a centralized financial structure, but the social protection capacity of the state has become overwhelmed by both the numbers of the underclass and the wealth of the overclass. This is often presented as an intentional political position, but it should be easy to see that this was just a pragmatic alignment with the inevitable reality. A pandemic pushes the state into a position to assert absolute power, and a series of protests arise to test that power, while investors enter a mania for alternative financial systems. The differences in response to the various threats to state power raise the ultimate question of this learning unit: Is there such a thing as a power based on and constrained by the consent of the governed, or is a government only legitimized by its ability to exert and retain power in the form of control over the governed?
[+] [-] h2odragon|4 years ago|reply
Certainly some of their methods will be of great interest to the unpersons, perhaps some of the philosophy will be more appealing too.
[+] [-] robocat|4 years ago|reply
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cultures/wordcel-shape-rotato...
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/wordcels-numbercels-defi...
[+] [-] buraktamturk|4 years ago|reply
The bank that I had account + credit card was shut down (stolen by Turkish state) with the decree laws. My brother had an additional account in another bank. That bank terminated his account and credit card using decree laws as a reason, no court order.
We lost our jobs, money and freedom in a single night. Our company was shut down by the state without due process. My relatives, friends and colleagues got jailed and tortured by Turkish police and soldiers. We got fired and almost none of us were able to get employment (we got work permits revoked) code 36 (fired due to decree laws) is on social insurance records. University degrees of some of us cancelled by the decree law. There are thousands of things I want to tell but it is too long. At the end my brother became a permanent resident in Canada via asylum and I am an asylum seeker in Greece (decisions take way long here). My relatives and friends still in jail in Turkey.
To put it simply, what Canadian government is planning right now is a clear way to go for genocide. Killing people economically is a part of genocide method (don't ask me where I know it).