Of course there have been ample warnings, including the handing out of leaflets detailing the unlawful offenses. Many people were ticketed and arrested at border crossing protests, including 11 members of a splinter group, in posession of 13 long guns, ammunition, body armor and hand guns.
The Ambassodor Bridge, accounting for ~30% of the cross-border land trade has since been cleared. The damage is estimated at above $500M. Damages at border crossings in Alberta and Manitoba have been estimated at 48 and $73M respectively.
> and absolutely worthy of debate
No, it's worthy of ridicule, which is the right move here.
It's only a matter of time
why should private citizens have to lick the boots of government officials when they make stupid demands? They deserve mockery and being able to mock authority without fear of reprisal is the foundation of democracy
>I’m not an Edge customer but if I was I wouldn’t be anymore
you aren't their target market
While they may truly believe the law is amoral and are in part happy to make that statement, this is primarily a marketing stunt for the pro-privacy and unseizable aspects of self-custodied crypto wallets.
I'm assuming it's a case of "if enough users flag a topic", but is there a moderator involved at all?
Can a topic get 'unflagged' once flagged?
Could this system be abused by planted shills who coordinate 'flagging' when something is posted that is detrimental to a company?
I read the post, I see people's point here that responding with a meme is perhaps not appropriate for some audiences on a serious matter, but I personally didn't find it in bad taste, and would never consider this as grounds for 'flagging'.
Especially since 'flagging' in this particular case effectively means "censorship" / "shadowbanning" (in that it causes the topic to be removed from the list of topics, but does not kill the link itself).
Reminds me of that quote: "The best way to keep people obedient is to severely limit the scope of conversation, but allow very vivid conversation within that scope"
Seems like the few people who spotted this topic before it was removed from the list are allowed to discuss this topic as passionately as they like, while the moderator sleeps quietly at night knowing nobody will ever discover this passionate conversation.
What a weird world we live in.
> How are stories ranked?
> The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way.
> Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action."
and
> What does [flagged] mean?
> Users flagged the post as breaking the guidelines or otherwise not belonging on HN.
> Moderators sometimes also add [flagged] (though not usually on submissions), and sometimes turn flags off when they are unfair.
You might also find the guidelines helpful in answering your questions.
So effectively a single normal user can flag a submission. Interesting.
Well, now protestors are being arrested and their accounts being frozen. They're no longer being treated nicely compared to environmental protestors.
While I don't agree with their stance, I do think that "we should not have a vaccine mandate" is a valid political opinion, and I support people being able to protest in support of their opinion.
Yes, it's legal to freeze the funds. The list of net-negative-for-society things perpetrated that have been legal in the jurisdictions in which they occurred is long.
I would rather these protestors, environmental/pipeline protestors, and generally all other protestors be treated gently rather than quashing protest.
Canada's laws protecting protestors are much more limited than those in the USA. If the Canadians have decided that this is how they would like their country to operate, that is their right, but I would hope that this sort of thing never happens in the US regardless of the cause.
Environmental protesters are FREQUENTLY arrested, so if you’re upset about these arrests at least have the decency to also be upset about these ones last year:
My point being that I am upset about the arrest of protestors in general; those, these, and others, and think that the arrest of people who are not hurting people should be celebrated approximately never.
Freezing assets without due process is a new thing which should be resisted as it's tyrannical and unchecked. Not good.
But responding with a meme? An institution that presumably holds my money? Oof.
I'll be the first to admit I think this protest is about a bunch of idiots with a victim complex. They should just get the vaccine like 90% of the rest of their profession have done. It's safe and is what anyone should do to help their fellow humans.
The Emergencies Act is law. If Edge wants to do business in Canada they have to follow it. I don't see this ending well for them.
Maybe I'm an old curmudgeon, but I also don't want to see ANY financial company using memes in an official press release.
They should just cut off their mobile data. Going without Joe Rogan podcasts and Jordan Peterson tweets will eventually hit hard.
Predictable one though.
(If only these people would actually use the decentralized tools they can't stop talking about, they wouldn't need some exchange posting memes to reassure them)
Thumbing your nose to the legacy governments and establishment is de rigueur.
This was never about vaccine mandates.
Note that other actions (including voting on the submission, and commenting/participating in the discussion) also affect ranking (according to the FAQ).
And before anyone hit’s the “i’m not anti-anti-fascist, i’m anti-antifa” there IS no antifa. You can’t join antifa, you can’t donate to antifa, they don’t give out member cards. It’s just a name people who are anti-fascism apply to themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...
...in the US, there are ~40 (after counting the green squares twice it seems there are now 41) ongoing "national emergencies" declared since the passage of the "National Emergencies Act" in 1976.
The oldest one seems to be from 1979 and involve sanctions on Iran from the hostage crisis.
Biden has declared five emergencies; Trump declared nine (that haven't ended), Obama also declared nine (again ignoring ones that ended), GWB declared eleven, net, Clinton declared six, net, and surprisingly all emergencies between 1979 and 1994, roughly did come to an end.
Regardless of what one thinks of it, it's curious that for a couple of decades, the norm was for emergencies in the US to end and now it's not.
What does Canada do for the world?
Take your argument a few steps further. Because of the naval security, should the US have the right to restrict abortion elsewhere in the world because a large portion of its population feels religiously inclined to enforce this?
My point is: Countries are supposed to be sovereign. Canada has no more right to enforce these laws beyond its border than the US does FATCA.
The id of kajal7052's comment is 30407693, which is after Waterluvian's (30407636).
That is what is happening here. A government attempt to silence dissidents.
First of all, look up the definition of terrorism. It’s not “thing you think is bad”. Pretty integral to terrorism is violence. No violence or threat of violence, no terrorism.
Second, all protest causes economic harm - successful protest causes significant economic harm. Your line of thinking would have you condemn friggin’ Gandhi, a globally renowned and much celebrated peaceful revolutionary. His entire non-violent protest movement relied heavily on inflicting economic damage.
Regarding economic harm, I agree that this isn't terrorism. But there is clearly a limit beyond which the protestors need to be arrested. They cannot be allowed to block trade between two countries, for example.
We should make a distinction. Is the point to cause economic harm (e.g blocking a trade route)? Or is the point to get exposure (e.g protesting in the middle of the city) which has a side effect of some economic harm?
I don't believe "The goal is to prevent use of assets right now to finance blockades," it's clearly an intimidation tactic against "undesirables."
If governments don't come down hard on using heavy vehicles for blockades, and don't do what they can to stop that being a financially supportable method of protest, it will be repeated everywhere, like the Gilets Jaunes model of protest.
But ultimately I think it would be better to make life miserable for them by degrees, rather than attacking their personal finances.
So the Spotify/Peterson idea was a sarcastic joke (which humourless people have downvoted), but why _not_ make it difficult for them to protest by making it hard for them to buy stuff, or by making it difficult for them to return to their cabs when they leave them? Why not make the protests less liveable?
The thing about non-vehicular protest is that it eventually fizzles out; people make their point, they endure some notable hardship, it makes the press, they make their point and they move on. Generally this is how protest brings about small changes. But it's inherent in the process that it's difficult, extreme and inappropriate to permanently disrupt.
There is a balance, and protests are designed to attract law enforcement; civil disobedience, arrest and being very publicly removed by the police is ultimately part of the modern mechanism of protest.
Road-blocking with a truck in which it is presumably quite routine to be able to exist in a little more comfort for a few days at a time is another matter, and if the response does not reflect that, it'll go on forever.
It's a clever idea, but just because it has clever and innovative advantages over e.g. chaining yourself to a fence doesn't mean that it should be granted a pass.
Either the protesters and the police come to some point of collusion about what their very public arrest and removal will look like, or something ultimately has to be done to stop them disrupting forever.
I understand that one of them has a Starlink dish set up on his truck.
Because i’d say yes we should allow that. We in the us and canada have governments that are proven to be unresponsive to the will of the people without the people giving the government a shove from time to time. If the majority supports a cause, the government should act - if it doesn’t, let the economy suffer until they do.
I also believe a different test applies when we’re talking about indigenous land. I.e. it’s no longer about a majority of the population - it’s about a majority of the people who’s land it is.
I don't want to pay tax and therefore I will shut down all international trade forever in order to protest my views on the matter, and you will support my right to do that? That's a reductio ad absurdum of your position. It is not workable.
Protesting during multiple weeks in winter is already unliveable. I live in Canada and would probably not do that unless the issue is life-or-death. Using extra-judicial means to quell opponents is not what our government should be doing, be it by freezing assets, preventing exchange of goods or other. One of the basis of modern democracy is due process and executive/legislative separation.
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-judge-orders-up-to-20-mil...
All protests ultimately end when the protesters allow themselves to be arrested or come to an agreement with the state or police for a way to protest over the long term that is present but less disruptive. Usually the process of protest involves some acceptance that the police are going to make your lives a little difficult; it's the nature of the beast.
But this is at a more significant scale, because each invididual protestor has a seriously outsize impact.
What happens to civil society if a bunch of truckers who believe a bunch of Qanon nonsense (and that is largely what is at work here -- not legitimate belief but conspiracy theories) can repeat this, over and over again, because of access to finance from outside (and even from abroad)?
I personally do not think that portable roadblocks on the basis of fringe belief funded by foreign state and non-state actors, going unchallenged, is something society should just do nothing about.
This isn't a one-off. Governments need to figure out how to allow this kind of protest for short periods but not tolerate for long periods, because road blockades have real consequences.
(As it goes, in the UK, it's the government that blocks roads with long tailbacks of lorries for purely partisan reasons)
If the majority does NOT support your demand, then yes your right to protest can be limited by others right to go about their lives. The more disruptive your protest, the less room there is to tolerate it. But a simple threshold of harm as you argued for is not the right test for this. Harm and public support. If 40% of people support your cause, a democratic society would not enact that cause - but it would tolerate more economic harm than a cause supported by 0.4% of the people.