The language of the manifesto suggests someone.. irate

20 hours of air horn outside your window will make you ... irate.

... but 2 years of government mandated economic destruction is fine?

They didn't do all this in Sweden.

Sweden's economy actually dropped harder than ours in Canada. The government was really generous, and while many especially in hospitality are worse off, few were truly devastated.

None of which are the supposed leaders of the manifestation, truckers, which actually did pretty well through all this - ask me why.

Sweden has vaccine rules too…

> Sweden has vaccine rules too…

Can't you enter Sweden with either vaccination or proof of recovery or a negative test?

https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/the-public-health-agency...

You know the reason why things aren't back to normal has little to do with mandates and a lot to do with the fact that, mandate or not, there was a deadly virus hanging around for two years and that's gonna change social behavior anyway?

Don't forget that 2 years of stress, angst, fear, new rules, normal hate of rules, etc. will make almost anyone stressed out and angry no matter how much they believe in the purpose behind it all, or how important it is.

Which when it's society wide, makes society stressed out and angry.

Stressed out and angry people do dumb and counter productive things. Sometimes even to the point of severe self harm.

Society when it is stressed out and angry tends to fragment and be less cohesive. Sometimes even to the point of severe self harm.

Wondering which side (or which sides there are, or why there even are 'sides') is doing the MOST dumb and counter productive thing is mostly part of the problem, not actually a solution, in the same way as a tired angry person trying to figure out who to yell at/blame, instead of getting some sleep or whatever.

Society wide, we need to do some serious self-care and calming the hell down - which would be nice, but good luck. So I expect we'll get a lot more fighting.

Things aren't back to normal because of politics. There have been places where things have been normal for over a year now.

No, there aren't.

I live in a place where you can shit on restrictions all you want. Things aren't back to normal because people are still careful on how much they socialize and what the risk profile is. Things aren't back to normal because people have moved away from offices and it turns out a lot of people like that just fine, meaning a lot of old businesses have shut down, new businesses have opened up, and habits have changed.

The old world isn't coming back, ever. The world has changed. Even post-pandemic (which we are still far from over) I'm just gonna be more conscious about spending time in very closed spaces for extended time. The uncompromising are gonna sit a few things out even more. Also something like 0.5% of the population died and a few percentage points have ongoing long-COVID.

> Also something like 0.5% of the population died [..]

Q: What % of the population would be expected to die in a "normal" (pre-Covid) year?

(I realise there is a discussion about excess deaths, but it's not quite as simple as being able to assign the excess to Covid, see https://www.health.org.uk/publications/long-reads/what-has-h... )

Yes, the majority of the population supports vaccine mandates.

It's almost assuredly not done by someone who was directly 'annoyed' by the protests, that's a relatively small area, and hackers with skills are not that common.

The protests are an ideological touchstone, there are surely a lot of hackers in this world keen on 'exposing terrible people' (in their purview) and my money is on just some random 'hacker'.

I'm doubtful that it would be a government action, because those secrets are hard to keep and if it was leaked, the current political situation would collapse immediately. Trudeau & Co. would be gone for good. The details wouldn't really matter that much. I mean, he survived Blackface but he won't survive that kind of scandal.

That said, I'm pretty sure there was a de-facto systematic collusion between gov. offisials and GoFundMe etc. to shut down funding. The gov. can show GFM 'police reports' etc. and that can be used as a basis for cancellation. This is a bit problematic because all protests of a certain size have 'unlawful activity' and as soon as something is on the books, it's hard to put in context. This gives systems like GFM (or Apple, or Google or Amazon or VISA) the legitimate 'cover' to do kind of whatever.

I don't support the truckers, I see their TikTok's and they are rather uninformed antivaxxers, however, I kind of have to accept their right to protest.

Protesters in Portland literally took city blocks by force, threatened violence with serious weapons, two people died, there was tons of avoidable crime, police and rescue not allowed to enter etc. and they didn't seem to get quite the disdain that the truckers are, rather the press kind of just seemed to 'avoid them'. I understand every situation is different ... but still.

Truckers are dug in in Ottawa and Police are wary of confrontation, there's hints that the rank and file of Ott Police and RCMP are a bit sympathetic, and the Tow Trucker drivers are as well and don't want to face blowback. There is 'just enough empathy' among the Canadian public that it could 'tip in their favour' if we saw the firehoses or CS gas break out. It's definitely a very delicate political situation.

But in the end - Occam's Razor: some guy did this and leaked it, that's that.

They will eventually go home.

> That's a relatively small area, and hackers with skills are not that common.

It is not some high end zero day they discovered. It is just a misconfigured s3 bucket. There are tools out there which scan for this kind of thing without any code required.

While some level of technical expertise is required, most developers could something like this if sufficiently motivated

>I'm pretty sure there was a de-facto systematic collusion between gov. offisials and GoFundMe etc. to shut down funding

No need to collude or conspire when everyone is already happy with each other's actions and everyone knows what the others want and which actions will step on their toes and which will be neutral or build good will.

Real collusion/conspiracy where there is actual communication between big actors like these is vanishingly rare. Behavior like "we set out price same as our competition's because why undercut each other" is dirt common.

I doubt someone who lived that close to the honking had the ability and chutzpah to do this.

After seeing how angry people got over Joe Rogan, I absolutely think there are militantly progressive people who are more concerned with the content of speech than the chilling effect of limiting free speech who would do this. Which isn't to say I agree with the Ottawa protesters or bridge blockaders; I think both went well outside the bounds of free speech.

This weekend a bunch of counter protesters went out and blocked a street in Ottawa to prevent new convoy protestors from entering the downtown core.[1]

I think if the ire of your neighbors has risen to the point that they'll go out and sit in -20C weather all day to stop you, it's not unlikely that someone would spend an afternoon poking at your website.

[1] https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/counter-protesters-block-convoy-ve...

So is somebody physically blocking a bridge with a giant truck and refusing to move it less militant than somebody pulling their music off Spotify and writing a letter explaining their choice?

Why did you use the term “militant” to describe the side that is not using military tactics.

This is the standard right-wing strategy. Speak of your opponent exactly as you deserve to be spoken about. As long as you do it first, it makes accusing you of what you're actually doing less impactful, and sows doubt.

Basically, they know that one side is militaristic, and the other is not, but they side with the militaristic side ideologically, so they reflexively demonize their opponents with terms that better describe themselves, Knowing it's a bad look intentionally distancing themselves from the reality of what they stand for.

Blocking bridges with trucks and no guns is a military tactic? I believe that is an example of civil disobedience. Words matter.

Yes. Disrupting supply chains is a thing militaries do. Regardless if they used guns or not. Militaries would love to win all conflicts with as few guns as possible. So if they could blockade a country with no guns at all, that would be ideal.

The point being made is that pulling one's music from Spotify is a personal choice about stuff you control.

Blocking bridges is forcing others who may not even be involved in your conflict to suffer the consequences of it. This is generally considered "a dick move".

Yes, blockades are a timeless military tactic.

They said “militant”. That does not mean “military”, it means “confrontational”.

Shutting down routes in and out of a city for such a selfish, delusional cause is well beyond what any rational person would call "civil disobedience". There is no basis for allowing the intentional permanent disruption of public resources and services to fight for a cause. You can't just filibuster society by sabotaging infrastructure like this.

With self-driving tech being a present reality, these truckers are just giving everyone a reason to automate them out of their jobs. A robot can't throw a tantrum, join a gang, and terrorize your city.

To be fair civil disobedience can be a military tactic if it´s employed to achieve a military/political goal.

And this isn't to pass judgment on any of the groups, I don't live in Canada, I'm not a Joe Rogan listener or Spotify user, I really don't care.

> Why did you use the term “militant” to describe the side that is not using military tactics.

I was using definition 2 to criticize censorship.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/militant#Adjective

Neil Young didn't just say he disagrees with Joe Rogan, he didn't launch his own podcast. He tried to use his position to silence Rogan.

Why wouldn't they? I've heard they're all over city cores and you wouldn't think a socially inept tech worker or teenager in a toronto tower would get annoyed enough on a pure noise basis to do something like this?

I think it's useful to set differences between freedom of speech and free usage of power.

You have a right to speak your mind, but your ability to exert power is regulated. The same goes for when the government ends a strike