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 have vaguely alluded to cases -- ones with almost no details, yet the few details that are brought up don't match any known donor lists (e.g. "Briane from Chilliwack") -- yet despite this being such an incredible hammer to take down this government, crickets.
So yes, I'll take the government's position on this.
"seal-clapping"
Ah, yes, "seal-clapping". That surely conveys the sincerity of your comment. Or we saw mass financing of public mayhem and realized that yes, this is a very real problem. It's a real problem that needs considerable solutions.
"purely because it's directed at a minority whom they have dehumanized for years"
A "minority"? This is perverse. By this measure, every deplorable subset is a protected minority that you will pearl clutch about. Won't someone think about the poor Nazis?
Financed mayhem will always come under the microscope.
Can you quantify this? Because I've seen zero quantification of this. Do you know the numbers? I have yet to hear anyone with your point of view point to a single specific number. Just hand-waving about FOREIGN MONEY that MIGHT BE FROM RUSSIA and TRUMPERS! Never is a single percentage mentioned in this regard. If it was remotely significant, mentioning the quantity would bolster the government's claim, and they would do so. They don't, which almost certainly indicates it's an insignificant amount.
"Financed mayhem will always come under the microscope"
Here in the US in the summer of 2020, we had entire city blocks burned to the ground, multiple police stations burned, a Federal courthouse besieged by suburban white kid radicals in Portland, a church set on fire across the street from the White House, had armed radicals occupy a neighborhood and police station in Seattle (mostly peaceful, but there were a few dozen incidents of minor violence and then a couple of murders towards the end) for months. The bad actors setting fires and perpetrating violence were a minority of the protesters. Most were simply exercising their first amendment rights. At no point did anyone freeze bank accounts, despite massive outpourings of donations from individuals for things like food, and more nefarious things like bailing out jailed rioters. It was a GOOD thing that nobody had their accounts frozen. It was immoral and wrong to allow a small number of bad actors to be used to delegitimize the entire movement. Therefore, the US government didn't do anything to rob these protesters of their rights to protest. And at no point, not for a single second, was the news media rooting for the police over the protesters. Certainly not the mainstream news in the US that has the vast majority of the mindshare. Not NPR, not CNN/ABC/NBC/CBS/MSNBC/NYT/etc.
By contrast, the truckers have been entirely peaceful. In a world where every human has a video camera in their pocket, there are no viral videos of violence perpetrated by the protesters. No viral videos of protesters hurling racist epithets. Instead, 2 videos showing lone actors carrying hateful flags (Confederate flag in Canada???? Really?) A few statues got vandalized in minor ways, but they got far more coverage than statues of Lincoln in the US did when they were vandalized and toppled by rioters.
"Won't someone think about the poor Nazis?":
So the truckers are Nazis? One person was photographed with a Swastika flag, and they are all Nazis? Do you apply the same judgement when you see protests in line with your laptop-class fashions carrying hammer/sickle flags? Or left-flavored anti-semitic flags, which always pop up in the fringes of fashionable left-wing protests?
It's blatantly obvious you have dehumanized all of these people based on propaganda and political bias. We all know why this is:
The truckers are part of a highly unfashionable political movement. And amongst the laptop class, fashion is king. If you dissent from the government in a manner that is fashionable to the elite class, you are a hero. Fringe elements who perpetrate violence are depicted as not representative of the movement. Maximum sympathy is provided. But unfashionable? Suddenly, a single incident of violence doesn't deserve the label "mostly peaceful", you get zero sympathy, and the media is aggressively cheering on the removal of your rights. You get labelled "deplorable" (that's the word you just used above) which is subjective and revealing of dehumanization.
I'm a lifelong liberal, I've never even voted Republican. I always hated the censorious, rabidly illiberal echo chamber of the GOP that was created by them allowing themselves to be taken over by Christian fundamentalists. The constant judgement, the constant othering and dehumanization of political opponents. Today, the center left parties in Europe/Canada/US are all on this train. I'm reminded of the old Black Panther Party quote: "Scratch a liberal, and you'll find a fascist."
I will not be voting Democrat in November, and look forward to ending all support for the party until they stop championing aggressive violations of civil liberties and government/corporate allied censorship. I say this as a person who has spent cumulative weeks volunteering for campaigns, including writing software for the Obama 2012 campaign as well as the 2014 midterms in Florida, where I did 5 figures worth of free labor for targeting applications for minority registration drives. I'm done, and people with your illiberal belief system inhabiting the center left is why. I'd rather vote for dumb rednecks who treat me like an adult than folks like Trudeau who think that an NPR-like soothing voice can cloak the authoritarian, paternalistic inclinations of their actual words.
If you keep this up we're going to end up having to ban you, especially because you appear to be using HN primarily for this. That's a clear abuse of the site, so please stop.
What is the line here? Isn't the entire thread, including comments I'm responding to, political? I've had an account for 10 years.
I get the sense that whenever I'm in any thread where many others are making similar, political comments, somebody gets upset and flags mine and I'm the one punished. The parent comments are all political. So what is the line between flame bait and commenting on politics?
The most recent occurrence listed was me stating to someone they were suffering from cognitive dissonance in June. If you actually look at that comment, it's not exactly a brutal insult.
I think you do a great job moderating and I don't envy the task. I just feel like there are certain kinds of users who flag everyone that disagrees with them and gives me the impression that political comments that do not go against certain dominant ideologies never get flagged but mine do.
My recommendation is that if HN does not want political discussion on the site, they shouldn't allow political links to be posted. My comments were directly related to the digital jail article's contents. I don't really see how any conversation around a government freezing people's bank accounts as a form of digital punishment cannot be political.
> If you dislike democracy because your guy isn't in charge, you don't like democracy and should just accept that fact and save the rhetoric.
You think the war measures act like the Emergencies Act is "democracy"?
Blacks, indigenous and hispanics have the lowest rates of vaccination in both Canada and US. If you think they are all "attempting an insurrection with daily QAnon rallies", you are living in alternate universe. I was there at the protest for 3 weekends and many of the people I met were vaxxed but opposed mandates. My buddy I was there with was also vaxxed but he took it because of coercion from the federal government because he works for them. There were nurses who took care of COVID patients for 2 years, gained natural immunity from infection and then were fired for not taking an unnecessary shot. There was even a vaxxed lady whose grandmother is 108 years old, had been given 4 shots and yet the nursing home isn't allowing them to meet in person due to COVID. These aren't political points which you are trying to make.
The second part of your comment tells me you aren't able to have a civil dialogue without ad-hominem attacks. Please read HN's guidelines before making such comments:
Would you please stop doing political/ideological flamewar on HN? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. We ban accounts that do it, regardless of what ideology they favor or disfavor, so please don't.
> Yet Trudeau invoked the same act which was renamed in 1980
You seem to be profoundly misinformed.
> When BLM burnt down billions of dollars worth of businesses
BLM burnt down billions of dollars worth of businesses in Canada? Wow, I guess I must have missed that news cycle.
The "whatabout BLM" tactic is so tired.
> I don't know why you care about skin color so much
Right.
> No clue what Qanon has anything to do with vax mandates
You know, I asked myself the same question. I wondered "why does the stage in Ottawa keep talking about WEF, the Rothschilds, poisons in children's cereals, child sex rings, Donald Trump, 5G, the conspiracy that all of the media is lying to you and some guy grifting off your cause is telling you the truth, etc". Why did so many participants keep talking about so many things but vaccine mandates. Why is the entire ecosystem, and so many supporters and supplicants of this movement so caught up in QAnon nonsense among other conspiracies? Glad you share the confusion.
> You are basically spouting corporate media nonsense
Here it is. I literally stated what I directly observed, and have heard (from people like you), and you wave it off as "corporate media". Did you perhaps spit at CBC reporters while you were busy honk honking?
Would you please stop doing political/ideological flamewar on HN? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. We ban accounts that do it, regardless of what ideology they favor or disfavor, so please don't.
Edit: you've been posting about nothing else for literally weeks now. That's seriously uncool, and we've had to ask you more than once before not to do this:
Worse than that, it appears that you've abused HN badly with many previous accounts and been banned many times in the past.
All that put together is so egregious that I've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll use the site as intended in the future.
"Edit: you've been posting about nothing else for literally weeks now."
This is beyond parody. It's as if your moderation is purpose driven to elevate and amplify disinformation, and that actually useful, meaningful discussion has disappeared from this site.
Congratulations, HN continues its descent to utter irrelevance. Now featuring literally daily QAnon nonsense, which you never moderate or threaten bans about (even after the few reasonable users try to flag and moderate). It's incredible that every one of my comments, in response to grossly ignorant nonsense, were highly upvoted by users. Then along comes dang, enabler of alt-right QAnon horseshit.
Cheers.
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 have vaguely alluded to cases -- ones with almost no details, yet the few details that are brought up don't match any known donor lists (e.g. "Briane from Chilliwack") -- yet despite this being such an incredible hammer to take down this government, crickets.
So yes, I'll take the government's position on this.
"seal-clapping"
Ah, yes, "seal-clapping". That surely conveys the sincerity of your comment. Or we saw mass financing of public mayhem and realized that yes, this is a very real problem. It's a real problem that needs considerable solutions.
"purely because it's directed at a minority whom they have dehumanized for years"
A "minority"? This is perverse. By this measure, every deplorable subset is a protected minority that you will pearl clutch about. Won't someone think about the poor Nazis?
Financed mayhem will always come under the microscope.