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The latest is insane.
Using powers granted under the Emergencies Act, the federal government has directed banks and other financial institutions to stop doing business with people associated with the anti-vaccine mandate convoy occupying the nation's capital.
According to the regulations published late Tuesday, financial institutions are required to monitor and halt all transactions that funnel money to demonstrators — a measure designed to cut off funding to a well-financed protest that has taken over large swaths of Ottawa's downtown core.
"Financial institutions" aren't just banks.
The government is also ordering insurance companies to suspend policies on vehicles that are part of an unlawful "public assembly."
These financial institutions can't handle cash, issue a loan, extend a mortgage or more generally facilitate "any transaction" of a "designated person" while the Emergencies Act is in place.
The regulations define a "designated person" who can be cut off from financial services as someone who is "directly or indirectly" participating in a "public assembly that may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace," or a person engaging in "serious interference with trade" or "critical infrastructure."
So basically, the Canadian government chickened out and mandated instead that the banks and insurance companies to do everything. Then rat out their customers to the government once they're done.
Banks also are required to "disclose without delay" the "existence of property in their possession or control" or "any information about a transaction or proposed transaction" related to a "designated person" to both the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).
"Those authorities are now in force and they're being used," said Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino. "It's incredibly important that we follow the money."
It's not "incredibly important" for anyone interested in rule of law, due process, or proportionality of punishment. And the final part:
The Emergencies Act and its associated regulations are in effect for only 30 days; that period could be shorter if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet revoke it or if Parliament scuttles it after a vote. But a senior government official said there could be long-term implications.
"For the most part, financial institutions can decide who they do business with and they may decide to cease offering financial services," the official said.
Mark Blumberg is a lawyer at Blumberg Segal LLP who specializes in non-profit and charity law. In an interview, he said that while the Emergencies Act gives banks time-limited powers, these institutions "may just decide to shut the person's account down" because there could be "huge risks" for banks servicing these customers in the future.
So rather than deal with the protest in a sensible manner (they're breaking the law, right?), the Canadian government has put forward this ridiculous "emergency" and deputized a bunch of businesses to go crazy with legal immunity (but only if they toe the government line). In the meantime, the protesters can lose their insurance and freeze finances. So what's going to happen to protesters of any sort in the future, if banks and insurance companies see them as liabilities due to this emergency?
Now imagine if Trump and US financial institutions had this kind of power over BLM protesters. Wouldn't be a problem, right?
Hopefully, this will get reversed in the Canadian courts, because otherwise it's a huge move towards tyranny, particularly of the fascist sort.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 20 2022, @04:21PM
People still seem to think "Nazi" is meant as a slur or term of abuse. It's not: it has a straightforward, literal meaning.
After WWII, there was a campaign to argue that Nazism had no real ideology, that it was just some group of people, to delegitimize it. That had some value, but its downside was that people forgot that Nazism *does* have an ideology.
Nazism conceives of the world as a struggle between races. That's not "race" in the 20c US "black/white" sense; Jews, Slavs, Britons, and so on are all "races," too. And Nazis believe that races have certain characteristics, which are passed on through the blood; and that they are bound to some land.
There are a few other articles of Nazi belief: for example, that acting ("the will") is better than thinking (a sign of weaker races). And that the strength of a race is most strongly exemplified through the untrammeled Will of its leaders. (If you're thinking, "Wait, you just made an ideology around obeying people who don't think?" you may have spotted one of the problems.)
The "National Socialism" is a very real thing, too. It's socialism *for memebers of the nation.* And hey decide who's in and who's out. Government subsidies for "good, decent people?" Sure. Just don't give it to those parasites.
So here's the important thing: These ideas make up Nazism. You don't need to wear a swastika to believe in them. And here's the other important thing: you may have grown up hearing "Nazis are the bad guys" without learning *why*. Or you may have learned about concentration camps, but not about what happened in the ten years leading up to them.
When the Nazis came to power in Germany, they didn't buid camps. They passed laws restricting jobs for "non-German" races (nations). They argued that money spent on the disabled was simply a drain on society, and we should move them to hospitals. They held angry public rallies which often included violence. Their leaders and militias flaunted the law, because they knew it didn't apply. They saw who they could kill and get away with, and gradually, over time, expanded that.
They encouraged "voluntary self-deportation" of unwanted Jews, by banning them from holding jobs. When no country wanted a few million refugees, it was their proof that nobody wanted the Jews.
So camps were started up as administrative holding centers, where they could be put to good use - that is, as slave labor.
The disabled, moved to remote hospitals, were out of sight and out of mind: so that's where they did their first experiments of mass murder.
I could go on about this for hours, but the point is: this was a story of an ideology which did exactly what it said on the label. Not by showing up one night and starting to kill people, but slowly, gradually, building up public normalization of what they did.
When I refer to Nazis, I am not using this as some king of generic slur against people I disagree with. Nazis are people who subscribe to the ideology of Nazism, plain and simple, whatever organizations they do or don't affiliate with.
Nazism is an ideology fundamentally inimical to everyone who isn't a Nazi. It is a known and proven threat to life...