Just like with any bulk data collection and surveillance technology, it is only a question of how soon it will be abused.
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/even-small-donation-t...
> Even small donation to Freedom Convoy after Feb. 15 enough to have donor's bank accounts frozen, finance committee told
Punishment would involve having something further taken away. If they jailed people for donating, that would be punishment.
Presumably to the entity you intended to donate to, no? I would argue that determining where your money goes is a right.. If I intercepted all of your future charitable donations for my own purposes you would be understandably upset.
also what constitutes a terrorist? its easy to say ISIS is terrorism, but are the truckers or January 6th people considered terrorists?
if so then BLM can be considered terrorists, and then how come they never got their donations seized?
deep rabbit hole with no way out
> On February 17, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said in a press conference that financial institutions have started freezing accounts and canceling credit cards in accordance with the Emergencies Act, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked earlier this week.
> The powers granted by the act would allow banks to target the accounts of people who have donated to crowdfunding platforms, like the fundraising campaigns on GoFundMe and GiveSendGo, that have fueled the ongoing protests, but Freeland said she would not give "specifics of whose accounts are being frozen."
They can lock anything for any amount and not give any details. Supposedly they have unlocked some, but there's no way of knowing who and why not for others. Typical petrostate behavior.
>“Just to be clear, a financial contribution either through a crowdsourced platform or directly, could result in their bank account being frozen?” Lawrence asked.
>“Yes,” Jacques answered.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/mp-mark-stra...
Still waiting to see the evidence that it happened.
RCMP denied being involved and were rushing to unfreeze those accounts.
So imagine Trudeau's point of view. The Canadian media smeared the protest as nazis, racists, white supremacists, who were going to Ottawa to overthrow the government. Indie and international media clearly disproved this, but Trudeau never saw this. Joel Lightbound, one of Trudeau's top allies saw this.
So imagine you are Trudeau. You believe that a bunch of nazis are looking to overthrow the government. You absolutely declare a national emergency and send the police to arrest them. You also seize the bank accounts of those who are involved in the military occupation of the capital.
The problem? The canadian media was lying quite extensively. This was a legitimate protest of regular canadians who are good people.
I never intended to excuse anything. The media is bought and paid for by the government. This is the state propaganda who called the protest a bunch of nazis.
Worse yet... Joel Lightbound is a liberal quebec MP. He made the huge mistake of going to the protest and talk to them and he was astounded by how misrepresented the protest was by Canadian media. Over a week before the emergency was declared he said exactly what should happen. Stop the inflammatory messaging calling them all nazis, they are not nazis. Give us a roadmap to when our rights will be restored.
That would have solved the entire problem long before anything went down. Today, not only did everything that the protest was protesting still remains without a roadmap, they have added new restrictions to our rights.
There is an intentional conflation between political reform and treason/rebellion happening here.
Not doing what you're told to and seeking political reform is only rebellion in an absolute dictatorship
The Governor General is Canada's representative of the Queen. They are not a politician. Literal centuries of British and Canadian jurisprudence have defined the Governor General to have no ability to act without the advice of their Prime Minister. As an unelected representative of the Monarch, if they act without the advice of the Prime Minister, that's a tyrant overthrowing the elected government. England cut off the head of the last monarch to act against the will of the House.
I still think that characterizing the memorandum of understanding as treason is a misunderstanding of both what a MoU is and the contents of this specific MoU.
First, a MoU is a declaration of intent and a commitment to take an action - Not a legislative bill.
This MoU was addressed to both the Senate and the Governor General.
It doesn't specify how the parties will achieve their their commitment. It is up to the parties to determine if there is a lawful way to meet their commitments before making them.
Senators in Canada have the ability to introduce bills, which can be approved via the traditional pathway.
It also doesn't say anything about removal of the PM.
https://canada-unity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Combined...
I said it was undemocratically overthrowing the government. That is a political act.
How can something be a terrorist plot to overthrow the government, but not treason?
I dont know this website. Article written March 10th well after the fact and just hosts a very clearly one sided view of this. Jody thomas? I dont know wtf this is about.
Let me explain in much better detail about what you're trying to get at.
There was a website named 'canada unity' who put together a MOU in which called on the governor general to inform Trudeau that he has to return our charter rights. In a way you can read it as saying the governor general is overthrowing the government by effectively dissolving Trudeau's government.
This poorly put together was run by JAMES BAUDER and his wife. They were never even for a second one of the protest leaders.
Yet the canadian media portrayed this website as THE protest leaders. Used this MOU as justification of calling on the governor general to overthrow the government's sovereignty. This is how they are claiming the protest was overthrowing the government.
So for example: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/who-is-who-a-guide-to-the-majo...
Notice how James Bauder is literally the top of the list.
But wait lets look at this closer.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/tamara-lich-chris-barb...
Ctrl + f "bauder": 0 results.
James Bauder was nobody.
Tamara Lich was the key organizer. Involvement in several previous protests. She represented the protest in negotiations with the mayor of ottawa. She represented the protest in court over the honking situation.
Chris Barber had Jordan Peterson's audience.
Pat King is an actor on the otherhand. His acting played the canadian media's bias against themselves so badly.
What exactly was the crime the protest was committing. Parking violations really.
The only problem that anyone can explain about this peaceful protest is ParKing violations.
Yet here we are, everyone is a nazis, confederates, racists. Pat King offered the canadian media every prejudice, every biased hate thing he could think of. He got into the limelight because they ate up everything he said. He gave them everything they ever wanted on a golden platter.
For multiple elections conservatives have run on the plan to defund these lying canadian media. They got played big time.
Flipside, we're now a month later and pat king is still in jail. Original charge was just 'counseling mischief' but the new charges are 'counseling a felony that wasnt committed."
Absurd vague fake charges to crush a peaceful protest.
You can personnally cry and cry that they were not leaders of the movement, but never has Tamara Lich publically denounced James Bauder, or denied her desire to overthrow the government. She never went on record denouncing his involvement in any leadership position. Letting someone in a protest you supposedely organize run around and demand the overthrow of the government is a thing that happens all the time; it's common. Whenever that person has the limelight on them, you vigorously denounce them and deny any sort of leadership on their part. Failure to do so means you agree.
Ultimately, this whole convoy was dangerously inept. That's a thing. You can be so clueless, so reckless that you're a danger to others.
Excellent, you cede that they were peaceful and therefore their charter rights were violated.
>we are discussing whether or not self-evident leaders of the movement wanted a coup.
They didn't. The Media doesnt get to pick who the leaders are neither.
>You can personnally cry and cry that they were not leaders of the movement, but never has Tamara Lich publically denounced James Bauder, or denied her desire to overthrow the government.
I provided CBC who clearly never listed James Bauder as a protest leader. Never did Tamara Lich ever call for overthrow of the government. You want to think the media gets to choose some random protester, say he is leader and then use them?
> She never went on record denouncing his involvement in any leadership position.
She doesnt need to. That's a ridiculous requirement.
>Letting someone in a protest you supposedely organize run around and demand the overthrow of the government is a thing that happens all the time; it's common.
Perfect! In future... the media gets to pick who the leader of all protests are. Not the protest itself. Did you meet John Smith the ecoterrorist who wishes to destroy Canada? Every future protest = illegal now.
>Whenever that person has the limelight on them, you vigorously denounce them and deny any sort of leadership on their part. Failure to do so means you agree.
Great, going forward all left-wing protests will have John Smith the ecoterrorist speaking for them.
>Ultimately, this whole convoy was dangerously inept. That's a thing. You can be so clueless, so reckless that you're a danger to others.
How dare they so recklessly exercise their right to protest!
Reality doesn't care about your feelings about James Bauder.
Does it matter if you agree or disagree with this? I provided a cbc link that listed the leaders. Bauder was not among them. Why do you think the CBC didn't even list bauder?
In fact, im just doing a search right now... there's no articles on cbc at all listing bauder as anything at all. Which is in fact impossible because I recall reading about bauder, the mou, and how they plan to overthrow the government on the cbc amongst others. It would seem the CBC quietly deleted those articles.
>When James Bauder said he was a leader of the movement.
Did you know I am the leader of BLM?
>hen many news outlet identified him as a leader of the movement. When many protesters identified him as a leader of the movement. And Tamara Lich never denounced him or any of his formal requests to the Governor General.
Why indeed has BLM never denounced me, John Smith the ecoterrorist. Is it by chance Bauder and I were just never a leader. That media smears were ignored by the real leadership?
Politically unaligned media don't get to pick the leaders of a protest.
>Reality doesn't care about your feelings about James Bauder.
I know why you cling to Bauder so much when clearly he's not a real entity. Without this tremendously weak point... you literally have nothing else to say the protest were 'overthrowing the government'. Without this tenuous at best point, how do you ever justify a national emergency.
Ultimately it doesnt even matter. They were parked outfront parliament for weeks and never quite got around to insurrection. The entire narrative that they were trying to overthrow the government is without merit. Reality is on my side.
The donors should be happy all they got was a temporary freeze on their bank accounts. Had it been Islamist terror they had donated to, the accounts would have been terminated and criminal charges levied.
There's a hilarious video from our parliament.
Andrew Scheer(former conservative leader, former opposition leader) was talking.
Elizabeth May(former green party leader) got up and started accusing him of 'dogwhistles to nazis' blah blah.
Andrew Scheer stands up with the biggest smile.
He points out Elizabeth May has been arrested and convicted of an illegal blockade while being green party leader. That the precedent set will mean that the green party donaters will have their bank accounts seized as well as her own.
The irony, it's only matter of time that conservatives take government back and very well can do this now.
On twitter a ton of greenpeace and antifa people freaked out at this new precedent.
"What if I donate to greenpeace. Some point later they have a protest that goes sideways. My bank account gets seized?"
Yep.
Up to a quarter of Canadian-US trade was going through that area, and real people were suffering due to the trucker blockade. These economic disruptions had secondary effects that impact the lingering impacts of the pandemic and exacerbated supply chain issues.
There is not a whit of moral equivalency between climate change protests and some truckers afraid of a needle.
Because it was the current government abusing the act to use against their political opponents. Do you agree or disagee with this?
>This seems to be presented by you with apparent glee as a conservative vs green party/greenpeace/"antifa" or liberal issue.
If Canada is a free country and we do have fair and free elections. Inevitably the conservatives form government again. Andrew Scheer almost was prime minister.
I guess the glee comes from the above question. If you disagree and that the current government did not abuse the act to crush a peaceful protest. I will immediately agree with you and accept the precedent that this future conservative government gets to crush all dissenting political protests.
The glee you detect isn't glee. I very much disagree with this precedent. The government should NEVER be able to stop a peaceful protest. The glee is how absolutely tyrannical Trudeau acted.
>What you'll actually find is that broader society is just intolerant of the economic duress and disruptions caused by such protests.
Well first of all, this 'broader society' needs citation. The only people who suggest the majority of canadians agree with the use of the emergency act are the same media who called the protests a bunch of nazis. I dont accept state propaganda as facts sorry.
Also what economic duress and disruption? By the government's own admission in their required justification of the emergency act there was no blockades. The emergency act was used entirely and solely as part of the Ottawa protest. Blocking a few blocks in front of parliament. There is no economic duress here at all.
>Up to a quarter of Canadian-US trade was going through that area, and real people were suffering due to the trucker blockade. These economic disruptions had secondary effects that impact the lingering impacts of the pandemic and exacerbated supply chain issues.
1/4 of usa trade goes through downtown ottawa for no damned reason? Can you prove that in any way please?
Or do you mean the detroit bridge blockade? Not only was there 1 lane open, the detroit tunnel was completely unblockaded. Sarnia's bluewater bridge was not blockaded. Niagara falls, not blockaded. And cherry on top... the ambassador bridge dissolved BEFORE they even mentioned talking about the emergency act.
No, I dont expect you are trying to use a non-existent blockade as justification for national emergency. The only place the emergency act was used was in ottawa. Surely you are arguing 1/4 of usa trades has to drive in front of parliament?
>There is not a whit of moral equivalency between climate change protests and some truckers afraid of a needle.
If you say so. I do believe I get to decide upon my own moral decisions.
Here's really what's happened. Trudeau was misinformed greatly by the canadian media. He crushed the legitimate protest because he misunderstood why the canadian media called for the denazification of the protest. Trudeau absolutely acted tyrannically and has not fixed the situation.
The precedent is set, conservatives do NOT have the right to protest right now. All of the original reasons for the original protest still stand AND they've added new vaccine mandates making the reason for protesting to increase.
Without the right to peaceful protest.. it means other protest will now be required.
Funny it took white people getting their bank accounts frozen for there to be noise that the government has too much power and wields it against citizens with impunity. Wonder how Trudeau's government treats the First Nations? Oh that's right, running oil pipelines through their land.
Only a certain demographic has had freedom of protest in Canada. Have you ever been water cannoned for defending your home and the groundwater of your community? But sure, conservatives are the new precedent about not being able to protest. No demographic has been harmed in Canada as deeply or egregiously as the conservatives who live underground now and trade in scrip
If you analyze protests lately like the 'mostly peaceful' burning riots of BLM etc. Which as a quick aside, BLM is fully justified in their protest.Police brutality and clear systemic racism is objectively true.
Compare that to the over the top peaceful protest in Ottawa. Which was intentionally that way. The protest policed itself to not give the media this. The media has been smearing conservatives for so long.
But more importantly, and clearly you went right to armed insurrection. Who said this was an insurrection. Notice also how January 6 went from insurrection to less than a riot. It's not even a riot, it's just an 'attack' now. Trudeau urgently wanted it to turn into an insurrection... the false allegation and propaganda was that the protest was looking to overthrow the government. Which isn't true at all. They sat outside in -20c on the road and NEVER insurrected or even tried to overthrow anything.
This just goes to prove how wrong all of this still is. Conservatives still do not have the right to protest.
>Funny it took white people getting their bank accounts frozen for there to be noise that the government has too much power and wields it against citizens with impunity. Wonder how Trudeau's government treats the First Nations? Oh that's right, running oil pipelines through their land.
Um... the protest in ottawa was disproportionately not white. https://notthebee.com/article/come-and-laugh-with-me-at-the-...
This was another case of Blackface Trudeau harming racial minorities. You bring up first nations...
https://twitter.com/TheRealKeean/status/1486399666677768195
https://twitter.com/BrianBeny/status/1487119890423205890
>Only a certain demographic has had freedom of protest in Canada.
Why do you think Trudeau hates racial minorities so much? Vaccine mandates disproportionately harm racial minorities especially black and indigenous canadians.
>Have you ever been water cannoned for defending your home and the groundwater of your community? But sure, conservatives are the new precedent about not being able to protest. No demographic has been harmed in Canada as deeply or egregiously as the conservatives who live underground now and trade in scrip
It almost reads like you read conservative = white people. How very incorrect.
Let me guess... you're not racial minority.
Trudeau backed the farmer's protest in India. Those protests were much more deadly.
https://www.timesnownews.com/international/article/when-the-...
Trudeau on protests in India:
> “I would be remiss if I didn’t start by recognising the news coming from India about the protest by farmers. The situation is concerning. We are all very worried about family and friends. We know that’s a reality for many of you. Let me remind you, Canada will always be there to defend the rights of peaceful protesters. We believe in the process of dialogue. We’ve reached out through multiple means to the Indian authorities to highlight our concerns. This is a moment for all of us to pull together,” Trudeau had said in November 2021.
Those were in fact not peaceful
> 1 journalist killed. One person lynched for alleged desecration. Over 1,500 telecom tower sites damaged by protestors (as of 28 Dec). Government buses and 30 police vehicles damaged on Republic Day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020–2021_Indian_farmers%27_pr...
Race plays a role in vaccination. Black and Indigenous Canadians are only around 50% vaccinated. Indian/Punjabis are somewhere around 70%. An awful lot of truckers are Indian. Especially from Quebec.
One of the original key issues that sparked this protest is the action by Trudeau to ban unvaccinated truckers and put them out of a job. This disproportionately harmed racial minorities including Indians.
The comparison or hypocrisy is that he supported the indian farmers but called the punjabi truckers a bunch of racists. It blows my mind.
Canadian truckers were > 90% vaccinated at the time of the "Trucker" Tantrum. There were very few Southeast Asians in evidence among the tantrum throwers.
They were majority white (mostly because the Southeast Asian truckers in Canada are mostly vaccinated and were quite busy because the people throwing the tantrum weren’t actually working because they refused to get vaccinated).
I really don’t see how you could reasonably read that as a statement of support.
Why not similarly back the democratic legal processes?
Or are Canada's laws more sacred than India's laws?
Why not supoort peaceful protests in Canada?
1. Is blocking roads and blowing horns is equivalent to crashing planes into buildings and setting off bombs?
2. Were the truckers designated a terrorist entity under the Anti-Terrorism Act?
3. Was there an actual legal prohibition against financially supporting them?
At worst were literally attempting regime change. They were also largely funded by the US far right, which has obvious links to Russia. In fact Russian propoganda was encouraging similar actions in the US and the EU.
So of course they were defunded.
It's always amusing to see libertarians complaining that a government shoots first - financially in this case, and only after a long delay - and asks questions later, when they're typically the people claiming loudly that far more extreme forms of violence are always legitimate in personal self-defence.
Just as with Jan 6, most of these people should have been jailed and those from the US should have been banned from entering Canada again.
Never mind the political angle, the nuisance and intimidation were more than enough to justify that.
But freezing the bank accounts of people who donated to them without due process is beyond the pail. Given that cash is mostly dead as a result of covid, banking needs to be considered a basic right. It shouldn’t be able to be revoked simply because the government doesn’t like what you do with your money.
It is not. The parent comment compared truckers to Al-Qaeda. I pointed out the ridiculouslness of it.
> At worst were literally attempting regime change.
Regime change? You seem to be using words that don't mean what you think they mean
> They were also largely funded by the US far right
And?
> which has obvious links to Russia.
Those links are not obvious to me at all.
> It's always amusing to see libertarians
Rule of law isn't something that only libertarians care about. It's the very basis of liberal democracy.
I'm not going bother responding to the rest of your comment which quite frankly is unworthy of HN.
do you regularly see libertarians advocating for shooting the friends & family of an attacker, in your own words, "after a long delay"? this is a very poor comparison.
[citation needed]
The Emergencies Act,[1] explicitly written to be compatible with the Charter, does not allow for retroactive actions [2]. There was a lot of initial confusion, and so whatever story you may have heard (and is stuck in your head), you may wish to go back and double-check to see if there were any corrections.
One cannot deny that the emergency act was used this way. The RCMP confirmed(https://blockade.rcmp.ca/news-nouvelles/ncr-rcn211130-s-d-en...) that this happened and denied being the ones who did it. Implying either the government went around them OR the banks took this action upon themselves with gigantic liability issues.
>The Emergencies Act,[1] explicitly written to be compatible with the Charter, does not allow for retroactive actions [2].
That's a very good point, but incorrect. The emergency act is EXPECTED to trample on charter rights. In an actual emergency it's entirely expected that police will go over the line.
What exactly was the emergency act used for? Not a single blockade existed. It was used entirely for the protest in Ottawa. Their goal is to remove the illegally parked semi trucks.
If this was used in such a way that charter rights were not trampled on. The police would have gone in, towed the trucks and left the protesters who were lawfully protesting.
That's not at all what happened. They came in and removed the entire lawful protest, not just some illegally parked trucks. The emergency act was used to crush a legitimate protest.
So what happens next? Section 46 of the emergency act is next. The people damaged by the protest, be it having gotten pepper sprayed or your right to protest being removed. You get compensation. The crown is about to pay huge $ to these protesters.
Created on January 1 (01/01), 2017. It's kind of become less throwaway over time. :)
Also: your username is in green, which means (IIRC) it is less than two weeks old. One of us has a higher probability of being a throwaway.
> One cannot deny that the emergency act was used this way.
Your link says nothing to confirm that it was an ex post facto action.
> That's a very good point, but incorrect. The emergency act is EXPECTED to trample on charter rights. In an actual emergency it's entirely expected that police will go over the line.
The Emergencies Act itself says it is subject to the Charter:
> AND WHEREAS the Governor in Council, in taking such special temporary measures, would be subject to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Bill of Rights and must have regard to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, particularly with respect to those fundamental rights that are not to be limited or abridged even in a national emergency;
* https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/E-4.5/page-1.html
> That's not at all what happened. They came in and removed the entire lawful protest, not just some illegally parked trucks. The emergency act was used to crush a legitimate protest.
It was not a blockade or protest that got removed: once they started living there it became an occupation.
Further, threats of use of violence are not part of legal protests:
> (a) the continuing blockades by both persons and motor vehicles that is occurring at various locations throughout Canada and the continuing threats to oppose measures to remove the blockades, including by force, which blockades are being carried on in conjunction with activities that are directed toward or in support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property, including critical infrastructure, for the purpose of achieving a political or ideological objective within Canada,
* https://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2022/2022-02-15-x1/html/s...
Source?
But there are some example of people who have come forth: https://www.visiontimes.com/2022/02/21/canadians-frozen-bank...
> Vision Times is one of the news organizations that Falun Gong's founder Li Hongzhi refers to as "our media".[1] The newspaper's president is the spokesperson for the Falun Dafa Association in New York, and is chair of another Falun Gong group called Quit the CCP.[1] In 2021, The Atlantic called Vision Times a "doppelgänger site" of The Epoch Times.[5]
None of the donating people mentioned in that article have come forth, if they had done we'd have some evidence it happened.
Thus, I asked for a source.
Canada's democracy slip up was criticized in the EU: https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/rest-of-the-world-n...
> the burden of proof is on you
Which is impossible because the government explicitly said they won't be transparent and that all the charges are secret:
> Freeland said she would not give "specifics of whose accounts are being frozen."
-- https://www.newsweek.com/banks-have-begun-freezing-accounts-...
Freeland did say that they would be freezing the donators as well in the original videos.
The more egregious comment was by David Lamenti. He's a lawyer and law professor. He knows the law. His comments are not a gaffe and not out of context or anything. This is not him pulling the wrong insult out of his bag. He spoke clearly and he meant every little bit of the comment.
https://torontosun.com/news/national/trudeau-minister-threat...
The CTV guy is even like wtf.
Days later the RCMP disavowed being involved and urgently worked to unfreeze those bank accounts.
https://blockade.rcmp.ca/news-nouvelles/ncr-rcn211130-s-d-en...
This is kind of the argument that Gerald Butts made. That technically parliament approved this misuse of power. In a way you are right. Here's the problem.
The Canadian media represented the protest as a bunch of nazis and maga military occupying ottawa and loooking to over throw the government.
The NYTimes thought it was the best story ever. They put boots on the ground and said... wait we don't really agree with the goal of the protest but it's a legitimate protest. That using force to end the protest would be wrong. That in a democracy protests are going to be annoying but these must be left to exist.
They are right. There can never be an exception to the charter right of peaceful protest. Right now, what the conservatives in Canada have been told is that they do not have the right to protest. They will simply declare another national emergency, seize bank accounts, and arrest them on 'mischief' charges.
So now what happens? The conservatives cant peacefully protest... media is smearing them to propaganda levels.
You can still do roaming protests where you keep moving making stopping the protest difficult to do. I suspect these kinds of protests will get tiresome.
Eventually you just say, ok, peaceful isn't allowed. Other than peaceful is our new option.
There are some oversights. Under the Emergencies Act, the Parliament and the Senate get to confirm the use of the act. What surprised people were the fact that the action of voting down the use of the act will trigger an election, and parties didn't want an election. [1]
[1]: https://windsorstar.com/news/canada/mps-to-vote-tonight-on-w...
That's kind of the problem. No judge was ever involved. The emergency act was deployed by Trudeau, they seized bank accounts and arrested legitimate peaceful protesters. Tyrannically crushing a legitimate protest just because ~70 semi trucks were illegally parked in ottawa.
Also “crushing” a protest usually involves lots more violence then was employed. Tiananmen Square was crushed (literally), US civil rights protests were crushed with firehouses and dogs, etc. The actions of the Canadian government seem anodyne to any government I’ve heard described as “crushing” a protest.
It did not do this at all. When I zoom in on Ottawa and ignore gatineau. I would assert the city center is say UofOttwa to the east side, if not all the way to the rideau. Maybe kowloon market, china town, little italy, centretown west is the west side. With a southern spot of maybe the 417 highway?
What did the protest block? You'll have to zoom it significant more. It blocked what wellington and queen for 2 blocks? It did absolutely nothing to 90% of the city centre.
To suggest a protest at parliament hill is 'completely shutting down the major city center' is absurd.
> harassed locals for weeks seems like a totally legitimate use of government power to me.
Ok, fine, so we set the precedent that you agree with. You're fine with future governments crushing legitimate protests under the same misrepresentations as well? Afterall, how much conservative protests are there? Pretty rare. We're going to be crushing left-wing protest for the most part.
>They also blocked a major bridge border crossing and attempted to block other border crossings.
Did they? Which bridge in Ottawa did they block? Or do you mean ambassador bridge which is a related but unconnected protest. This blockade ended before the emergency act was ever implemented. We are talking about Trudeau crushing a legitimate protest in ottawa. The emergency act was used for ONLY ottawa, took them days to even do anything.
>That makes them less of a protest and more a rebellion.
A rebellion! Oh wow. A peaceful protest in front of parliament with bouncy castles and hottub is a rebellion. I guess they just never quite got around to the rebelling part...
I honestly didnt even see the canadian media label them a rebellion. Sure even doug ford called them a military occupation. But rebellion!
>I can’t think of a single country in the world which would allow an absolutely tiny minority to shut down border crossings for extended periods of time.
People linked Trudeau being in favour of the extremely violent hong kong riots and the only marginally violent farmer protests in india. Yet he refused to even talk to them once. Couldnt even send a staffer to go talk to the protest once.
I would hope ANY government would be forced to talk to a protest at least once before declaring national emergency and crushing them with force.
>Preventing trade to that extent is arguably a form of violence; using horns in residential areas late at night is definitely violent.
Oh wow, we are even redefining what violence is. Why are you doing this? There's a clear reason. The protesters have the right to 'peaceful protest'. You are required to redefine 'violence' in order to invalidate their charter rights. I see what you are doing.
You are even redefining what a residential area is. For the record... you have to go about 4 blocks or more away from the protest to get to the first residential building. Where they were parked is not residential at all. Census data is public. The protest was never 'harassing residents'. At most they were 'harassing counter protesters' which is what it is.
>Also “crushing” a protest usually involves lots more violence then was employed.
Now you're redefining crushing?
>The actions of the Canadian government seem anodyne to any government I’ve heard described as “crushing” a protest.
Crushing means 'to subdue completely' or 'oppress grievously'. Well the day before they gave the emergency act back. There was not a single protester in ottawa and parliament hill. They subdued the protest completely. AKA they crushed a peaceful protest.
There's a reason why Bill Maher called Trudeau Hitler right before he crushed a peaceful protest. After he tyrannically crushed the protest and made protesting illegal for conservatives. Bill Maher seems to be saying that Trudeau = Hitler.
We now have corporations who can skim off a percentage of absolutely every sale. And they keep putting up their prices.
I don’t mind paying with a card but there needs to be a new option that cuts these companies out.
Here in India cash use is still very popular and mostly used for tax avoidance and to avoid surveillance by the government agencies.
Electronic transfers (made by website, telephone, app, in the branch etc) between bank accounts are also free for consumers, although I don't think there's any rule requiring this.
"Overall, 23 million people said that using cash made them feel more in control of their finances. Two-thirds were concerned about fraud when making payments and 57pc were concerned about privacy."
The rest of the article, if I'm reading it right, makes it clear that "in control" is meant in the sense of "to be on top of it", rather than a distrust of banks or the government.
One of their papers on the subject basically accepted that a lot of the poorest Dutch residents are using cash in the underground economy, and advised that tampering with it would cause a lot of hardship.
What we need is more competition in the banking sectors. And I am not talking about more private for-profits banks. We need:
1. Public own banks. A bank as a public service. Indeed, governments will have more control on it but if you are a citizen of another country, this becomes less of a problem. You could be depositing your money into the Public Bank of Canada for example. A bank as a public service might have nefarious interests too but at least they would be different from a private for-profit bank.
2. We need private non profit banks. Banks run as an NGO. And on this, we could help by providing open source banking software. Rigorously tested and hardened.
You have, many haven't. There's plenty of people who pay their rent in cash and work in a business that pays them in cash (strippers, some farm laborers, etc). Surviving in the US with cash only would take away a lot of options for many people but at the same time, it's completely possible.
IMO we need more ways to bypass banks, including the central bank, not more of them.
There’s still a lot of people who don’t have a card, or can’t use a card for some reason.
We had those in the UK, they were called building societies. They were mostly regional and offered savings accounts and mortgages.
Unfortunately nearly all of them demutualised in the nineties, there is only one major one left now[1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_Building_Society
The USA has many credit unions.
Also, how would you earn interest on your money if not by lending it out to others, who would then also be customers of your bank and hence owners?
It sounds to me like what you describe is either
(a) not really a bank in the sense that we mean when we talk about banks, or
(b) not a logical extension of collective ownership but rather that you want a traditional capitalist bank except where you are the owner instead of someone else.
Collectivism taken to the most localized extreme is individualism. This is a collective of one.
>(a) not really a bank in the sense that we mean when we talk about banks, or
You can ask these questions about any bank; the mere fact this bank is owned by the sole depositor doesn't change what a bank is.
>I'd want multiple owners for central limit theorem reasons. How would you work around extreme variability in demands if you are the sole owner?
The sole depositor is also the sole owner. It's a collective ownership of depositing customers, not those who owe the bank money.
But in the end I'm just exemplifying what the logic extreme of your suggestion ends in, which actually happens to be a system I approve of. You keep treasury notes in your wallet, lend them if you like, and pull them out whenever you'd like to 'withdraw' them from your demand account. There's no fancy rubber stamp or business license to back it up, but it meets the definition of a bank (which is roughly an institution that accepts demand deposits and possibly loans them out).
I think of loans as a critical part of the bank business because otherwise it's just a glorified safe.
So do private corporations like Ebay, which have a history of closing private accounts for random reasons.
But for context, this is a scare story without any real substance in the UK's premier far-right paper for rich kooks. The Telegraph is notorious as a non-reputable source, and I would be very surprised if there any serious moves to ban cash in the UK - or the US - any time soon.
As mentionned in the article, some people use cash because they struggle with budgetting. They may get a specified amount of money from the ATM each week in their wallet and get an immediate visual clue of where they at in any moment. Using cash actually make you see the money going out. It is much more tangible than just numbers to a lot of us.
We could probably think of other options, like having rechargeable money card with some kind of visual bar indicator showing the amount of money left but that is not there yet.
Also as much as I like using my cards and phones for payments, they are really bad for privacy. All you payments get stored in a database waiting to be dumped, stolen and leaked. And it is not a matter of if but rather of when.
You have a huge variety of choice of bank, including nonprofit, cooperative credit unions that don't do anything evil to their customers.
Banks borrow money cheap. Can a regular person do that? No. Of course not.
It's clearly about control/money. Same thing
Banks don't need to borrow money, they just create it:
* https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1905625
* https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/m...
If you still think about banks re-loaning bank deposits you're living in another century. Fractional reserve banking hasn't been a thing since (at least) the 1960s.
Also, the government already forces you to have auto insurance. This doesn't really seem any better or worse.
There are a plenty of cheap loans available to regular persons, but of course you have to be an adult to access those.
It can also be difficult to open without an address or with certain history, even if you are a citizen or legal resident.
Homeless people don't meet some of the expectations for what banks want in a person - an address
Not every USE of power is an ABUSE of power.
BTC is the only escape hatch.
Then again, I rarely hear anyone discuss the benefits of inflation (I didn't say hyperinflation).
"This damn inflation is making my mortgage payments significantly less than my payments from 10 year ago!" said Nobody
Aren't there many people who have low/no debt, and those people are only hurt by inflation? What about savings?
I'm not an economist, though, and still struggling to understand the roles that inflation plays in the economy.
Inflation, might not make goods and services cheaper, but it can have an effect that can be used to one's advantage.
I've already mentioned mortgages, but it might be the same with many other loans and services. Assuming interest rates are low enough (if not zero), then deferring the whole payment means that you retain money to work for you, as well as take advantage of the effects of inflation on the overall financed amount as long as the period is long enough.
Locking in service rates (grandfathered) can work to your advantage as well, depending on the service agreements of course.
I'd say there are a lot of people with bad debt, but often times that comes as a result of hardship, or just bad financial decisions and life choices.
Those that have no debt are probably not going through financial hardships, but should probably start accruing manageable debt to avail from the effects of inflation, retain more money so that it can work for them, and build credit history to become more debt-worthy.
Saving money is just losing money due to inflation and lost potential. It's a difficult one bc we all know we should keep a certain amount of money just in case, and putting it somewhere where it's working for you but still liquid if needed is quite difficult. If times get hard and you need to liquidate your investments, chances are that you will be losing a lot bc when times are hard, investments are down.
Saving money is really quit discourage, and there are some pretty compelling reasons why this is a good thing. Money that is saved is usually money that is out of circulation. As a result, it's not doing any "work" and fewer goods and services are purchased and economies slow as a result.
This gives banks and governments immense control and power over literally all the money you own. Given said power, they will abuse it for their own profit. It's not a question of "IF they abuse it" it is a GUARANTEED. They WILL abuse this power. If you deny this fact, you are living in a fantasy. Give people power, and it will be used, 100% of the time, and not to your benefit.