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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: 1, Troll) by khallow on Friday February 18 2022, @04:22AM (22 children)
Thanks for warning me. I would have expected a serious post, if it weren't for your empty trash talk.
In other words, they're popular.
Well, the protesters say otherwise. What makes your opinion more relevant than theirs?
I guess if you can't say anything relevant, might as well just pull a great big conspiracy out of your ass. I find it amusing how this mirrors (rhetorically) the pro-Russian propaganda that's been posted here recently about those evil, neo-nazi Ukrainians - invasions are too good for them.
So why aren't these people being arrested and their trucks towed, if they're such a nuisance? Right the it's the "took them a week to do it" people, right?
Doing nothing indeed shows weakness. So what are you and your neighbors doing?
I'm also used to people calling everything they don't like "Nazi". It doesn't have any relevance to me, or to this discussion for that matter.
A big, glaring thing you miss is that these emergency powers aren't getting used against Nazis. They're getting used against "designated people" with no accountability or legal framework for who gets designated.
How about instead of being cowards, all these people whose jobs it is to prevent lawbreaking like this do their jobs in a timely manner?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 18 2022, @04:53AM (4 children)
People I like = activists with grassroots support
People I don't like = well funded fascist nazis
It's so SIMPLE. How could you not GET IT?
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 18 2022, @06:22PM (3 children)
Maybe don't run around waving swastika flags if you don't want to be called a Nazi?
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Friday February 18 2022, @08:00PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21 2022, @11:39PM (1 child)
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/canadian-officials-who-met-with-ukrainian-unit-linked-to-neo-nazis-feared-exposure-by-news-media-documents [ottawacitizen.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 22 2022, @02:58AM
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 18 2022, @06:15AM (3 children)
You mother-licking goddamned lying weasel of shit, khallow! We know you expected nothing of the sort, since you again are, wait for it, (obvious rebuttal), arguing in bad faith. Very, very, bad faith. You are lucky to get off with very indirect rebuttals. I was going to suggest we take off, and Nuke the Ontario fascist truckers from orbit. Really is the only way to be sure. Bad faith, khallow. This is your 241st warning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 19 2022, @02:03AM (2 children)
Say goodnight, ari!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 19 2022, @08:09AM (1 child)
Well, if it really is ari. How can you tell?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 20 2022, @09:54AM
It looks like ari. May we burn him?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 18 2022, @07:43AM (7 children)
If they were popular in Canada they wouldn't be dependent on external funding. The US outnumbers Canada 10:1, so a movement supported by 5% of the US has the same resources as a movement supported by 50% of Canadians. This is why foreign money must never be allowed in domestic politics.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by khallow on Friday February 18 2022, @12:06PM (5 children)
So you acknowledge they are popular. Rest my case on that one. And I find all the babble about "well-funded" to be ridiculous. How well funded does a simple protest that has only lasted a few weeks need to be?
Let's stop being stupid for a minute here. Even if foreign support from a neighboring democracy really were a problem (which nobody has shown), Trudeau's measures will cut these protesters off from all support, including themselves. It's a complete disfranchisement not just cutting them off from foreign funding. Sorry, that's bullshit.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 18 2022, @05:57PM (4 children)
No, I made no such admission. They are a fringe movement, but their voice is amplified because the American fringe supporting them outnumbers the Canadian majority.
They have already raised tens of millions of dollars, and there are reports that a lot of it is coming from the US. Cutting them off from foreign support is right and proper. Cutting them off from domestic support, especially their own, is going too far.
To be clear, I don't agree with what they say. I do agree that they have the right to say it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 18 2022, @08:07PM (3 children)
"Right and proper", eh? I think we're seeing a typical failure mode of what happens when you screw around like that. I notice that no one has bothered to explain what's supposed to be wrong with US support.
I think it'll be amusing when this argument gets turned against you in the future.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 20 2022, @12:12AM (2 children)
Repeating what I said earlier, "The US outnumbers Canada 10:1, so a movement supported by 5% of the US has the same resources as a movement supported by 50% of Canadians." That means that a foreign fringe group can overwhelm the domestic majority, which is anti-democracy. If you really can't understand why that is a bad thing, I can't help you.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 20 2022, @02:49AM
Last I heard, those protests get get a lot of Canadian support.
No such overwhelming has occurred. Rather I see that a group with valid concerns (even being anti-vax is within the valid purview of Canada citizens) is being attacked because it also happens to be supported to a significant degree by US citizens. This is merely a propaganda attack not a legitimate concern.
Notice that this is consistent with my long term stance on foreign influence. For example, back in 2018 I wrote this:
I wasn't defending a bunch of Russian citizens who just happened to be "overwhelming" some US system. It's the Russian government.
The reason is the following:
Basically, the accusations of funding from US sources is just a giant ad hominem (much like the Nazi accusations and the claim that one already has to be vaccinated going the other way). Foreign entanglements and such are easy to fabricate. My take is that we have a great example of this right here. There's no strings attached to that money, they're just getting it because they're popular with various parties in Canada and the US.
And consider this: if Trudeau's strategy works and all access to financial resources is cut off, then foreign contributions (which incidentally will probably include Canadian contributions routed through a foreign proxy in order to bypass this decree) will be the only way they can survive and protest.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 20 2022, @09:56AM
The saying is:
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 18 2022, @04:16PM
So Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland [notcbc.ca] will not be accepting any more money from the World Economic Forum then? Perhaps the RCMP can detain them without charge while the matter is investigated?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 20 2022, @04:21PM (4 children)
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...
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 20 2022, @09:12PM
#BlackFaceHitler
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 21 2022, @01:41PM
Cool story, bro. Now find someone who actually used Nazi as your straightforward, literal meaning. Including you.
In other words, you're not serious. If you really had been using the words as appropriate, you would have presented evidence of said Nazism rather than just sling it around like a slur. I find it remarkable how often people can describe things like the real meaning of words or the process of rational thought, then when I look in their posts, it's just not there. There's a huge gap between idea and reality. It shows up in your post as well.
In the original post, there were several warning signs of misuse of "Nazi". First, tarring the whole from some small group, which might be Nazi or might not. Consider these pointless quotes:
Someone was waving a swastika flag. Some "Diagalon" group that nobody has ever heard of before is extremely violent, might be associated with the protest, might be associated with someone who has been termed a cell, and might actually not be a joke. Someone has been harassing people. Someone allegedly started a fire in a building lobby and chained the exits. Looks like two [ctvnews.ca] on this video who may or may not have been involved with the protest - but certainly weren't everyone.
None of which shows that the protesters as a whole fit your description of Nazis, intentional Nazis or not. This is just a tarring of a protest with the actions of the worst small subgroup you could find. Reminds me of how Black Lives Matter people were tarred with the actions of arsonists and rioters.
Further, if we look at actual Nazi protests of the 1920s and 1930s, there was mass participation (example [wikipedia.org] from 1923) in the symbology and the acts of violence (like the mass violence between Nazis and Communists that led to the coup [wikipedia.org] of the Free State of Prussia), not one guy with a flag or one "cell" with a plan, a few rude people harassing someone on the streets, or a couple arsonists with firecrackers and chains.
Misuse of these labels merely to denigrate groups you don't like cheapens the words. But I imagine you've heard that before - hence, the narrative you've been pushing. Well, I guess it is a start, but you'll need to try harder.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 21 2022, @01:45PM (1 child)
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @10:13PM
You Nazi, and Nazi sympathizer, khallow! You know what happened to those, after the last World War?