Florida governor to investigate GoFundMe over Canada trucker donations | Hacker News Reader

Florida governor to investigate GoFundMe over Canada trucker donations

reuters.com

213 pointsthrowawaysea645 comments

All: if you're going to post in a thread like this, where the topic is inflammatory, please make sure you're up on the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html — and do one of the following:

(1) post thoughtfully and substantively, with respect for the people you disagree with,

(2) don't post.

We want curious conversation here.

Also keep in mind that in the backdrop of all this is the fact that our Prime Minister has called the protesters racists and misogynists. Probably inspiring someone who ran over some protesters in Winnipeg.

Canadian news and politicians are desperately trying to denounce the protesters while ignoring the fact that Canada has some of the harshest Covid restrictions in the world at the moment, while the US has hardly any and European nations are mostly moving to remove all restrictions.

Even more stupid: Canadian media and Twitter users saying they are “fringe” because by a poll (totally no incentive to lie on those), 85% of truckers are vaccinated.

To which I say:

A. I bet more than 15% are unvaccinated because why answer honestly with Canada’s level of restrictions and penalties?

B. If it is actually 15%, that’s not fringe, and also that’s low enough that dropping the mandate should be reasonable (see all the countries who dropped restrictions at 75%-80% vaccination).

It makes no sense to assume that these guys aren't vaccinated anyway. They aren't against the vaccine, they are against the mandate!

> They aren't against the vaccine, they are against the mandate!

It makes no sense, but the amount of people who conflate the two is shockingly high. I guess strawmans are easier to argue against than someone who holds nuanced views.

edit: one such example of someone who conflates the two https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30225017

It doesn’t help that they intentionally conflate the two issues by defining “anti-vaxxer” as anyone who “opposes regulations mandating vaccination”.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-vaxxer

FYI Merriam Webster is among the worst dictionaries. They are highly activist and have redefined words repeatedly to suit the progressive/far-left political platform.

A couple examples (but there are more):

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52993306

https://www.dailywire.com/news/merriam-webster-suddenly-alte...

They added systemic oppression of a racial group to the 3 definitions of racism they already had. Do you deny this is a common meaning?

LGBT people objected to sexual preference since the 1980s at least.[1]

[1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1986-07-23-860223...

>why answer honestly with Canada’s level of restrictions and penalties?

Surely you jest. Polls are anonymous. And even if the security is bad, nobody is scrutinizing IP logs of poll respondents. Maybe in Kazakhstan or something, but freedom in the West has not fallen that far.

People do lie on polls, of course, but it's usually about self-expression, not self-protection. I'd imagine that vaccinated truckers are more likely to report antagonism to vaccine mandates by lying about being unvaccinated vs. the reverse.

This poll was not conducted online.

And probably had only answers that supported whatever hypothesis they were trying to assert.

You also have to consider that unvaccinated answering the poll honestly would be admitting to something that puts their livelihood on the line. I imagine that a disproportionate number would refuse to respond at all.

Imagine if I ran a nationwide poll asking if you’d ever had a felony conviction.

I bet the numbers for that poll would be way lower than the real statistics.

People don’t answer honestly on polls if they feel there is any way (even a perception) that this could come back and hurt them.

Or if you asked if you got away with a felony crime!

I can’t understand this dichotomy. Just because one is vaccinated, does not mean they are pro-mandates.

I'm pro vaccine but the mandates and access cards and testing requirements makes me sick to my stomach

I had to sign a letter with my employer stating that I accepted I could be terminated should I not be fully vaccinated by Dec 31, 2021. I feel a line has been crossed, and I fully support the idea that the mandate is bad. Vaccines are great, I voluntarily got it anyway, but I don't feel it's ok to say you deserve to be fired or worse (and I've heard much worse) if you decide the vaccine is not for you. I support the protest. It is not an anti-vax protest. I do not beleive it is about racisim or white supremacy despite what our prime minister says or thinks.

in the USA, a psychiatric patient, even if seriously ill, has the right to refuse medication. This non-negotiable law is in place exactly because of past generations battle over forced medications.

>in the USA, a psychiatric patient, even if seriously ill, has the right to refuse medication

even if involuntarily committed to a mental institution?

There are definitely constitutional boundaries. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Connor_v._Donaldson

Most states define laws of their own around this, and usually a longer involuntary stay requires a court hearing. But I wouldn’t be surprised if even those are operating in a legal gray area that would get shot down upon a SCOTUS hearing. More realistically, the Supreme Court wouldn’t hear these cases due to higher priorities, but I think the “right to liberty” has only very few exceptions.

They absolutely do medicate people against their will all the time. Google "booty juice".

I don't think that's comparable at all. If you don't want to get vaccinated but your employer has a mandate, you can quit.

Similarly, your employer can fire you if there is no reasonable accommodation for your medical condition that you are willing to accept. If, for example, you have a treatable form of schizophrenia but refuse all medication, you can get fired if that condition renders you unable to perform your job duties.

You can get committed to an institution, or your employer can be forced to reinstate you, but absent such an order from the legal system, you are free to refuse treatment, and your employer is free to let you go.

>I don't think that's comparable at all. If you don't want to get vaccinated but your employer has a mandate, you can quit.

You can't quit the game. I assure you. Might as well make the stand here and now, because in the end, it will find it's way back to you. People problems always do.

Same, I'm vaccinated but I recently resigned from my company because they had a vaccine mandate (no testing option) because they're a federal contractor. Now I'm working for a company that has a testing option but I choose to upload vaccine card instead. My personal choice. The company I resigned from dropped the mandate after it was stopped by the courts but the damage had already been done.

In fact, shouldn't it be the opposite way? Imagine getting vaxxed just so you are forced to stay home or wear a mask everywhere just like everybody else.

Public health “experts” have done very little to quell fearful vaccinated people. In my opinion some of the worst anti-vaxx propaganda comes right from these health departments.

If you are vaccinated, you are done with the pandemic. Morally, ethically, and practically. You should be allowed to return to actual, pre-pandemic normal. End of story.

> If you are vaccinated, you are done with the pandemic. Morally, ethically, and practically. You should be allowed to return to actual, pre-pandemic normal. End of story.

What if you have children who are not yet eligible for the vaccine?

Children are not any more at risk from covid than the flu (even less, I believe) yet never before did we have these restrictions.

How do you know the long term effects?

I’m vaccinated. How do you know the long term effects of mRNA vaccines?

The Bayesian probability leans heavily toward the vaccine being safe and the virus dangerous.

From what we are seeing the vaccine side effects are similar but considerably milder and short term, the virus sometimes has long term negative effects (lung capacity, fatigue, weakness, inability to concentrate…)

We have a long history with coronaviruses. I doubt you worried about any of the others before.

Then you look at the data and see that:

"Covid-19 has killed 280 children under 18 from January through September 2021, the time span in which the alpha and delta variants were active. Flu and pneumonia, heart disease, drowning, guns, and motor vehicles were all deadlier to children during the same time periods annually from 2015 to 2019 (the latest years with available data)[0]."

[0]: https://www.vox.com/22699019/covid-19-children-kids-risk-hos...

While I agree that it seems children are very low risk you have to remember they are partly lower because of the precautions taken(lockdowns, mandates, vaccines, masks, fear, etc). We don't know the "normal" death rate for Covid just yet.

How many people have children infected, though? It doesn’t get to them and stop. Kids are very good at spreading germs.

COVID is at most as dangerous as a normal cold for kids. This is a fact. It’s not even controversial.

Children are good at infecting others, for whom it may not be so harmless.

If an at-risk adult doesn't want to get vaccinated at this point, it's on them. Enough with this lunatic safetyism already.

If you made a list off the lunatic safetyism that kids have to put up with these days, I don’t think wearing masks would even make the short list. There’s a lot.

Even if you are vaccinated you can still get sick. The chances are reduced, but you can still end up in hospital, you could still die.

If enough people still get sick at once there could still be a collapse in a local health system due to overloading.

Given the uncertainty with new variations of COVID isn't it better to err on the side of caution and try to protect both the health systems and as many people at once?

All of that was true with the flu and vaccinated people are not any more at risk from covid than flu. Why the permanent change?

In fact, the UK health authorities argued that flu vaccine mandates make more sense for hospital workers than covid vaccine mandates with omicron.

It all depends on what are the numbers. In any case before deciding on vaccine mandates, certain conditions have to be satisfied:

1. Will the mandate increase vaccine uptake?

2. Will the mandate prevent overloading hospitals and clinics?

3. Are the health benefits for others proportionate to the risks for vaccinated?

4. Are less restrictive policies available that can achieve similar outcomes?

The UK decided to go with without vaccine mandates. They even revoked them for healthcare workers because with omicron variant they no longer made sense.

I am not saying what Canada should do, but at this moment vaccine mandates don't really seem worth to truckers, if not for all people.

Everything you said is fantasy speculation. Counties and States that have moved on are doing just fine.

No. The time for an abundance of caution was 2020. You can get vaxxed if you want and N95's are effective if you want to protect yourself. Society can't keep dragging this giant "safety" rock behind it forever.

Others have already highlighted that you can be vaccinated and anti-mandate, which is what many people are focusing on.

From a numbers perspective, 91.54% of Canadians 18+ have received at least one dose. 88.91% of 18+ have received two.

It's /possible/ that truckers are widely unvaccinated (perhaps they all subscribe to the same train of thought), but it's unlikely.

At this point a majority of Canadas anti-mandate movement, which recently became a majority is “vaccinated but anti-mandate” just because the numbers literally don’t allow for any other reality.

I am vaccinated, boosted, and anti mandate.

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." — Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government (1791)

You don't have a right to cross a border and spread a deadly disease. As far as I'm aware, these truckers are allowed to work unvaccinated within their own country.

Which disease, flu? They've likely been spreading that for decades.

Various disease, actually. Not the flu, but most borders will ask that you're vaccinated for a whole host of diseases if you come for professional reasons.

Were Canadian truckers previously required to prove vaccination against various diseases?

As far as I understand, Canadians were exempted from these vaccinations for non-covid diseases. That is probably because vaccinations are mandatory as a child in Canada.

> Canadian media and Twitter users saying they are “fringe” because by a poll (totally no incentive to lie on those), 85% of truckers are vaccinated.

The state sponsored ones?

At this point I don't think it's only about the vaccines.

> protesters racists and misogynists

That's probably because of the Nazi and Confederate flags people are waving.

In my opinion, they should cry it out or quit given Canada's 1 dose vaccination rate is in the 80% range.

The video of the confederate flag guy shows that he was shunned by the protestors.

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1487834109678395392

Last I heard, the convoy organizers put a bounty on the Nazi flag guy for any information leading to his identification. There is also video of protesters calling out the confederate flag guy and telling him to leave. Two assholes showing up to a protest don't represent the agenda of the entire group. The BLM riots had a much higher asshole ratio last time I checked.

How silly is it to have a confederate flag at a Canadian protest, anyway, if not simply for shaping optics in the citizenry of the United States to tell them how to frame current events??

Screams of an orchestrated heuristic.

If you’re aware of such a fringe factoid as flags appearing in the crowd but simultaneously unaware of the footage demonstrating these to be literally false flags you may want to diversify your information sources.

The use of the plural "people" here is interesting. As far as I can tell there was one Nazi flag and one Confederate flag. But they sure got a lot of media play...

I'm concerned about 1st amendment and the soft power politicians have on freedom of speech (yes I know this is in Canada). When the head politician of a country essentially calls your group terrorist, wouldn't that put some pressure on social media or other organizations to restrict access, money or censor speech?

Not all violations of free speech are literally police sending someone to jail for saying something. If the politicians pressure private organizations to censor speech, resulting in the speech being censored, then its absolutely a violation of free speech

Remember when Trump called antifa a terrorist org? I hope we've learned by now to stop taking the "terrorist" label seriously

Antifa is a terrorist organization. They have political goals that is fighting against political stance and they are trying to achieve this by violence.

Antifa is an ideology. The obvious choice is to support antifa because we've seen what profa does, and they are much more violent.

Just like people have stopped taking the "racist" label seriously.

“Terror” about describes it if it’s your neighborhood and not just a scene on TV. The people breaking windows of businesses that don’t sport the right stickers or threatening violence against those not wearing the right clothes or making the right salutes are appropriately called “terrorists” if not worse. I don’t take the label terrorist to heart when it’s some bullshit overseas conflict, but I know what structure fires look like, I know what mob frenzy looks like. I know what actual political violence looks like. I know how dangerous self-righteous violence can be. Calling antifa terrorists is spot on because that’s what they were/are as demonstrated/experienced by their actions and goals (of which, ant-fascism seems about opposite).

Yeah, we do not have what you think of in terms of freedom of speech in Canada. A private corporation using their insured property to audibly harass a city and blockade streets is not considered freedom of speech in Canada.

Take away their toys and let them hold a protest with their boots and parkas.

Why does the insurance status of property matter? Why does it matter if it belongs to a corporation (also don’t many truckers have their own trucks)? Do you also think megaphones shouldn’t be used to protest? What about amplifying platforms like Twitter? I feel like the line drawn in Canada is unprincipled, if it is as you describe, since truckers are using their property and platform of choice to enhance their protest, which fundamentally isn’t very different to me.

Freedom of expression features prominently in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is included in Section 2, which details fundamental freedoms, such as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom of assembly. It strains credulity to argue that this protest somehow exceeds protest norms when bullhorns, drums, honking, and other noisemaking has been a key part of protests for decades.

Civil disobedience was always a crime. Blocking streets without a permit is a crime. Excessive noise making at all hours of the day and night is a crime. These actions don't become legal if you label them "protest".

All of those "crimes" result in a ticket, not the person in question being hauled off to jail, and they typically aren't enforced on protestors. The government could direct the police to crack down, but that would just throw any pretense of evenhanded enforcement of the law out the window, and harden the protestors' resolve.

The notwithstanding clause kind of renders all those rights and freedoms a joke. The legislature can do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, just like in every other country, albeit with less pretense about it.

This is the second time someone has implied this protest isn’t valid because they’re doing it efficiently. It sounds like boomer “in my day” type rhetoric but is irrelevant to the legitimacy of any protest.

It's a bit worse than that given that CBC(among others) have received 1.4B in funding from the government. CBC is just as good or bad(depending on your viewpoint) as CNN/FOX, if not better/worse.

It feels really bad to have comments removed for keywords like PoC when it's coming from your own tax dollars.

Justin "I can't remember how many times I wore blackface" Trudeau calling anyone "racist" is rich: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/19/justin-trudeau...

Also, how does protesting COVID mandates make someone "racist and misogynist?" Is he just saying that because they're truckers?

> how does protesting COVID mandates

Uhh, I think calling for the overthrowing of the federal government[0] is a little more than just protesting a covid mandate lol. To be clear, I'm not saying overthrowing the federal gov't is racist or misogynist. I'm just saying that clearly there is a lot more going on than that

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/28/canada-trucker...

This is one of the most hyperbolic claims.

Overthrow the government in this case means publicly and commit to repealing mandates, and set up a citizen group to review policy.

Similar requests of governments happen every year in western countries. There are citizen oversight groups set up for failing school districts, police departments, and the environment.

None of these Re overthrowing the government

> One of the main groups behind the protest is Canada Unity, which has opposed what it says are “unconstitutional” Covid rules. The group recently posted a “memorandum of understanding” to its website, saying that members plan to present it to politicians on Parliament Hill. The group claims that the leader of the senate and the governor general will sign the document to create a governing committee, which they claim would work to revoke the vaccine mandate.

This is literally their demand

How is working with the government toward your goal "overthrowing the government"?

Democracy? It’s similar to revolution but without the violence.

Well, the media can’t spend two years telling people that riot and protest are legitimate forms of expression when feeling disenfranchised and then act shocked when all political demographics follow suit (J6, truckers). Want things to calm down? There’s a way to deescalate, but I don’t think the media is a friend in this story - they have a profit incentive to stir up chaos and disorder. People are increasingly losing confidence in elections - the right response isn’t to tell people to shut up, loosen controls and gerrymander, it’s to double up transparency and audits. People are losing confidence in institutional authority - the right response isn’t a public/private alliance on overt censorship, it’s less censorship and encouraging open debate. People feel mandates cause more harm than benefit now and are pissed about the prospect of eternal emergency powers. What’s the right response, Justin, calling in the military?? People increasingly feel the institutional “leaders” are incompetent, full of shit, and focused on the wrong priorities. Very dangerous to have loss of faith in elections concurrently with unsatisfactory office holders.

> create a governing committee

I started a reply but realize I was just repeating what I said before.

This isn't radical. Organized protests for hundreds of years have demanded public written concession. This is the norm and what organized protest looks like

They want to create a governing committee that is above the power of the government... that's pretty far from "demanding public written concession"

That's creating an alternative government

Nobody said anything about above the government..

If my city sets up a school board, that isn't a replacement government or above the power of the government.

Governments delegate power to panels and empowers them to make decisions on their behalf every day.

Asking a government to set up a group to make decisions is not Revolution

You can just read it for yourself:

https://canada-unity.com/mou/

> SCGGC will effective as of midnight on this ___, day of ___________, 2021,instruct all levels of the Federal, Provincial, Territorial, and Municipal governments to re-instate all employees in all branches of governments and, not limited to promote the same to the private industry and institutional sectors employees with full lawful employment rights prior to the wrongful and unlawful dismissals that stem from the SARS-CoV-2 (and not limited to SARS-CoV-2 subsequent variations) vaccine passport mandates

Not only do they want full control of all levels of government, but they also want to be able to tell all private companies that they need to rehire people fired

I have, that's why I wrote my original post that overthrow is a ridiculous claim. I dont think you understand it.

The SCGGC is the currently existing and only government of Canada. CU (the protesters) are asking it to use its powers to do something.

In your quote, they are asking the SCGGC to use its power to stop and reverse all SARS-CoV-2 firings.

They are also asking to SCGGC to agree to set up a committee (CCC) with no powers that will be used to share schedules for the covid policy reversal and issue joint statements about the mandates lifting

You have an odd definition of full-control.

I mean, in terms of legalese, they actually made a reasonable pass at scoping it down. Literally the only verbatim goal there is to reverse what was seen as overreach.

Just because it's a wide reach doesn't mean grasping for full unilateral ongoing control.

I also took his comments to say they're not Canadian.

The GFM action is also quite dehumanizing. It's a statement from a large donation platform (with all the associated feelings of righteousness) about the value of the protest.

I'm not really sure GFM is the problem though. I think the fear of the media might be forcing their hand. The consequences for keeping this fundraiser open would have hurt them somehow. Same with the consequences for shutting down a BLM fundraiser. Same consequence from the same source.

I'm completely unsympathetic (or rather hostile) to the protests, but I find it shocking that there's any legal framework under which Gofundme could shut down the page, seize all of the donations, and force people to basically file paperwork to get them back. There's something deeply asymmetrical in the way we treat white-collar crime as opposed to street crime.

It's bizarre that they even though they could get away with that in such a high-profile situation; I suppose they thought that they could rely on the hostility of people like me to passively take the side of the woke corporation against normal people.

> I find it shocking that there's any legal framework under which Gofundme could shut down the page, seize all of the donations, and force people to basically file paperwork to get them back. There's something deeply asymmetrical in the way we treat white-collar crime as opposed to street crime.

I agree that it's fucked up, but the "legal framework" is just the fact that people agreed to the terms and conditions. It's not really shocking, though that doesn't make it right

Also, to be clear, the donations that weren't refunded were to go to charities of the choosing of the organizers. It's not just being pocketed

Refusing to provide a service and giving people a refund is broadly legal in most of the western world for most reasons except for isolated cases like protected classes, etc.

GoFundMe's original plan was to force each donor to file a claim for a refund, with the remainder going to unspecified charities instead of the original cause. They amended this to automatic refunds after a massive backlash.

GoFundMe should be political neutral, but it openly turns left. I recommend a long post explaining this phenomenon: https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/why-is-everything-libe...

Vaccines didn't used to be political.

Mandates will always be political.

At least in the US lots of vaccines are mandated (of children) and it's not political.

For diseases that actually hurt children.

See this article by Dr Peter Attia (and embedded graph under heading "OBSERVATION 4") about how dangerous COVID is for children (and adults < 35).

https://peterattiamd.com/a-follow-up-to-my-article-on-vaccin...

I'm replying to someone who claimed mandates will always be political by pointing out a counter example.

The covid mandate in the US at least was of adults. All of whom are at some risk (especially if you include long covid).

My point is this: If you have a vaccine its inherently non-political, its just a medical intervention. But when it becomes mandated now you introduce a process by which some people can decide for some other people what must be done. That is politics.

That is not what people generally mean by "political".

It is a little bit political, usually doesn't reach the national level though.

I don't know what decade you were born in, but I have cousins aged 18 and 20 that have never been vaccinated because of their mom's political beliefs.

just because some people disagree with a policy does make it "political". I know someone that opposes seatbelt laws but that doesn't make them "political".

That said I don't think it's productive to debate what "political" means.

All policy is political by definition. Also the shared etymology is a bit of a hint too. Observe thar policy-makers is used as a synonym for politicians.

I don't think that's what people mean when they say an issue is political. They generally mean it's contentious or split partisanly.

Your definition would suggest public water utilities are "political" which sounds silly to me.

Google offers the definition

>relating to the ideas or strategies of a particular party or group in politics.

> Your definition would suggest public water utilities are "political" which sounds silly to me.

Tell that to the people of Flint, Michigan.

For their health when older, I hope they look into getting exposed to chicken pox ASAP.

Their grandma just died of covid, and while part of me would hope that it would be a wakeup call, the kids are all home-schooled, so they've probably swallowed the narrative that nothing different could have been done; it was just her time to meet Jesus.

I hope they don't get chickenpox, personally. I hope they get some life experience that opens their eyes to how ignorant they are.

I'm not implying they nor their family are ignorant. Chicken pox is easily survivable for children. Less so for older adults. My parents took me to a pox party of other kids specifically to be exposed.

Covid is also easily survivable for children, and adults in reasonably good health. I survived corona a year ago and now see no medical reason to get those jabs.

Immunity to COVID wanes over time, in part because it can take hold on the surfaces of your respiratory tract to a certain point without triggering the ire of your immune system (which is why vaccinated people can spread COVID). To keep yourself from developing a serious case of it, vaccinations need to be periodic, like the flu. You could keep getting it every year or so if you want, but getting it this year isn't going to prevent you from getting it next year

"To keep yourself from developing a serious case of it, vaccinations need to be periodic"

I had it and recovered. I have blood test results and Dr. letter to prove it.

The CDC says actual measured outcomes show I am in the category of persons who do better than the jabbed.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm "By early October, persons who survived a previous infection had lower case rates than persons who were vaccinated alone."

Your attempt to tell me to get yearly jabs is similar to what upsets the Canadian protestors. Please stop with the coercion and mandates.

You don't have to say it, they're my family and I'll tell it like it is: they are ignorant, and deliberately so. Home schooling is all part of the plan. (This is not a generic statement about home schooling, just these particular home-schoolers)

Likely because of a mistaken assumption of fears of autism. Politics only entered into this under Trump.

https://slate.com/technology/2021/02/smallpox-vaccine-bioatt...

Autism is one of many strawmen that the antivax movement throws out. You may have only become aware of this under Trump, but the antivaxers in my family are a flavor of anti-establishment Christian fundamentalists (quiverfull-aligned) that are absolutely political, and have been (I attest as a first-hand witness) for decades, long predating Trump's rise to power.

People didn't used to disagree with the politics.

People have always disagreed over politics, it's just that more things have been politicized.

This isn't a protest over vaccines though.

It was protesting vaccine requirements and has morphed into more because everybody loves a circus.

It’s a private company, it absolutely does not need to be neutral. They can choose any side they want. If you don’t like it, don’t use their platform. Gosh, when did the notion of private firms got so mixed up with so-called political neutrality? Are people this naïve?

>It’s a private company, it absolutely does not need to be neutral

You're talking past each other. OP said should, you're talking about "needs".

The point stands. No private company should be neutral.

The point doesn't stand for much, it's just your personal opinion.

Well, I commented it. Ofc it is my opinion, who else would it be?

It also happens to be how reality works. Private organizations have literally always chosen sides. It’s how the world works, and I’m sorry it doesn’t fit your likes. Nothing you can do about it mate.

>Well, I commented it. Ofc it is my opinion, who else would it be?

Your "point" doesn't stand for much if it's just your opinion and you refuse to justify the reason for it.

>It also happens to be how reality works. Private organizations have literally always chosen sides. It’s how the world works, and I’m sorry it doesn’t fit your likes. Nothing you can do about it mate.

The state can always send Men With Guns to quell dissenting speech. Should we also proclaim that the government "absolutely does not need" to guarantee freedom of speech? Corporations can ultimately coerce you into accepting terms that overwhelmingly favor them, by offering services under "take it or leave it" terms. Should we say that consumers "absolutely does not need" to be afforded consumer protection rights?

In a free society, businesses shouldn’t be able to suppress or punish customers for their political views. We already require businesses to not just do whatever they want in many ways. That’s what anti discrimination laws do, for example. We just need to make political viewpoint a protected class as well.

Apart from that, we also regulate a lot of private companies to be neutral. Your power utility may be private but can’t deplatform you. Telecom carriers are similar. Social media companies are just common carriers and public utilities that have avoided regulation so far with careful political donations. Payment companies (Visa, MasterCard, Stripe, PayPal, and yes, GoFundMe) are all just basic payment utilities and should also be treated as public utilities in many ways even if they remain private otherwise.

>In a free society, businesses shouldn’t be able to suppress or punish customers for their political views.

>We just need to make political viewpoint a protected class as well.

I have not gasped at the outlandishness of an HN post in some time.

GoFundMe is not a grocer, or a transit provider. It isn't a power company. It is a luxury service in a free market with low capital requirements.

Under no circumstance should arbitrary businesses be required to cater to people of all political persuasions.

Protected classes exist based on attributes of ourselves which are immutable. You can't change being a woman, being old, or being a particular ethnic group. You certainly "choose" your political opinions.

> >We just need to make political viewpoint a protected class as well.

> I have not gasped at the outlandishness of an HN post in some time.

How else can a democratic republic preserve the diversity of viewpoints required for such a society to function? This really shouldn't be a controversial idea.

Differences of opinion are not only okay, they are essential!

Should a conservative landlord be able to evict anyone who voted for a progressive? Or deny renting in the first place?

> Protected classes exist based on attributes of ourselves which are immutable. You can't change being a woman,

I can't phrase this any less provocatively... Are you saying that all rights against discrimination end if one has a gender transition because it's no longer immutable? I really don't think immutability is the right line to use to decide who gets rights.

Religious belief is protected, and also mutable. Ask me how I know. Political affiliation needs the same protection.

That's a misunderstanding of what the transition is - the transition is on how the gender is presented, not the underlying gender.

That's not to say immutability is a great method to determine rights. Mind you, I don't think political affiliation needs such protections. Freedom of expression and association already handle interactions with political affiliation. The government guarantees your ability to have a political opinion, but not for other people respect it or to help you promote it. What people do with their business is still part of their view points - the real solution is to decentralize power more, so that even if you get thrown out for your political opinion, you can always work somewhere else that likes your politics

Should a conservative landlord be able to evict anyone who voted for a progressive? Or deny renting in the first place?

No, but housing is already protected. How can you possibly think GoFundMe and housing/food are the same thing?

I simply struggle to understand why a decent person should have to serve someone who wants to kill minorities, or who wants to end democratic government in this country.

Furthermore, you act like if you don't enact this protection you're defending, no one will serve people of different political opinions. The truth is you're making a mountain out of an anthill. Most places serve people of differing political views. I go to a bar with a "Fuck Greg Abbott" sign at the front of the bar, and they'll happily serve a Conservative as long as they aren't being hateful. I happen to go to a bar owned by a Trumpian, anti-worker, anti-vax conservative (I happen to respect some of the bartenders, and the food is good). I am allowed to eat there despite the lack of your proposed legislation.

P.S.

>How else can a democratic republic preserve the diversity of viewpoints required for such a society to function?

It's functioned for close to 250 years, and the more I read American history, the more I realize that the current tumult and animosity is actually the norm, and the "peace" of the postwar period was the outlier.

Yeah, I despise general deplatforming, but "mandating that businesses accept everyone no matter the politics" is just as bad. Not everything needs a law.

When you have several groups of people who distrust and dislike each other, and you start using your business as a means to support the fight of one group against the other, you only increase the enmity between the groups and harm all businesses by starting a process that forces everyone to choose which group to support.

It does not matter whether the reason for initial distrust is religion, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation or political beliefs. You should not start such "economic war" unless your goal is complete elimination of the other group, which, i think, is a rather stupid goal to have.

You’re going to be really upset then to think about the business organizations that receive tax breaks in order to influence politics. Many non-profits exist only for this purpose.

The only reason abortion is a political issue, for example, is because of the outsized influence that tax exempt organizations have.

Are you implying that existence of these tax-exempt organizations and politicization of issues is a good thing?

I don't see anything positive in tax breaks and tax code complexity in general as it is a method to obfuscate spendings and evade taxes, which creates all kinds of unintended consequences.

No, I am not implying that. Just noting its systemic and may as well be an intended feature of the system. At the very least, it's an intended consequence.

I can see positives in having the flexibility to tax things to discourage them, or to encourage behaviors. That's one of the best tools the government has to influence the public's behavior! (EG cigarette taxes). No assessment of the net-net benefit, merely pointing out the complexity of taxes does enable some good things as well.

This is not to say that businesses should not do this, only that they have to position themselves to profit from this change in the market.

Selling to both sides can be a profitable venture, which encourages neutrality, but so is locking in customers by something other than the quality or price of your product

I am saying that if we condemn such behavior in all cases (even when neutrality is violated in our favour) we'll reduce the situations when that second strategy becomes profitable, and that will benefit everyone. We don't even need a very large percentage of people for this, even a relatively small group that always supports neutrality will be enough to keep the market neutral.

One can’t, for example, solicit donations for cancer research and then instead take those donations and fund swimming pools for dolphins or whatever… even if you’re a private company.

> It’s a private company, it absolutely does not need to be neutral.

Then state that they're not neutral on the TOS and don't accept funds.

They accepted funds and then tried to straight up steal them.

Yeah I'm flabbergasted that any company feels so comfortable and relaxed with stealing 9 million dollars in donations.

It's because Canadian politicians suggested they should... Thankfully there's enough people in the US who are rightly disgusted by it and GoFundMe is a US company.

>Gosh, when did the notion of private firms got so mixed up with so-called political neutrality? Are people this naïve?

When all speech, commerce, and art became transmitted by the permission of a small number of private firms whose combined powers exceed that of any nation-state.

This article does not support your claim. It talks about things being liberal, which is a right-wing, pro-market ideology and fundamentally incompatible with leftism.

That might be true if you're in a political science course or something, but in the US "liberal", "leftism", "left-wing" is usually synonymous with each other. Some of the "liberal causes" that the article talks about include "women’s march, BLM, and Occupy Wall Street ".

JFC. Liberalism has both left and right forms since its a goddamn political/moral philosophy and not a specific set of political views/policy.

i dont understand why there is such little knowledge on the history of political theory.

Very interesting explanation, thanks.

So many words and nothing about the urban-rural and the religious divide which explain many things.

I should have stuck to my rule about stopping reading at 'woke' but I wanted to give it a chance.

I have no idea why the urban-rural and the religious divide is relevant to the specific topic.

Anyone complaining about some big "left" collusion is essentially bashing a straw man. The actual truth is that there are more than two groups of political interests. Corporate interests are biased towards corporate interests, period. They're basically indifferent on social issues, and so from the right they appear "left" because they echo the broadest appeal as a marketing technique. Shoehorning everything that you disagree with into a single category and then thinking the whole world is ganging up on you is a completely broken model, but it is unfortunately lucrative.

The article is, in fact, doing the opposite of "complaining about some big 'left' collusion." It's an explanation of how a vocal minority can produce similar results without any sort of conspiracy.

> They're basically indifferent on social issues, and so from the right they appear "left" because they echo the broadest appeal as a marketing technique.

Last year, they had "Black Trans" posters at our local mall. My county is half Republicans, and a lot of the Democrats are middle class Black people who definitely do not have socially progressive views on gender identity.

The article is, in fact, doing the opposite of "complaining about some big 'left' collusion." It's an explanation of how a vocal minority can produce similar results without any sort of conspiracy.

> They're basically indifferent on social issues, and so from the right they appear "left" because they echo the broadest appeal as a marketing technique.

The notion that this stuff has the "broadest appeal as a marketing technique" doesn't hold water. Why are Hispanics suddenly "Latinx" now, when virtually no Hispanics identify with that term? https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in.... Last year, they had "Black Trans" posters at our local mall. My county is half Republicans, and a lot of the Democrats are middle class Black people who definitely do not have socially progressive views on gender identity.

The article explores some mechanics while still focused on this idea that corporations are inescapably left.

I'd say the larger difference is left activism is pro-social, or hyper-social in the extreme. "Black Trans" is promoting one specific identity, but not at the expense of others (apart from dilution). Whereas what is perceived as right activism has to rise to the level of being anti-social - a simple picture a happy heteronormative traditional family does not suffice (since it is taken for granted as the norm). Rather it defines itself by explicitly opposing left activism, and such overt conflict is a commercial non-starter.

> I'd say the larger difference is left activism is pro-social, or hyper-social in the extreme. "Black Trans" is promoting one specific identity, but not at the expense of others (apart from dilution).

Left activism is anti-social: it elevates the sovereign individual to primacy. It rejects the legitimacy of the majority to impose norms and demand conformity—even when it comes to socialization of children. It replaces that with the right of small minorities to impose norms on everyone else. For example, whereas in Asian countries you have norms that demand you address elders by formal titles, in left activism you have norms that require everyone to exchange pronouns for the sake of a small minority. The insistence on social affirmation, moreover, makes modern left activism different than the old liberal pluralism.

In the form of intersectionality, left activism is also appropriative. It uses the political capital of Black people, for example, to advance a number of other ideological positions which most Black people and Muslims don’t support and don’t agree with.

While you've made valid points for consideration about the blue tribe's blindspots, you're riffing off a different definition of anti-social than I used. You're talking about larger appreciation of social conformity, where I'm talking about creating immediate conflict.

Furthermore, US society is deeply rooted in individualism and so professing individualism is not leftist. In fact I'd say your framing does well to illustrate the disconnect - by attempting the claim that individualism is a leftist thing, despite it being overwhelmingly ingrained in mainstream US society, you're not really arguing for conservatism but rather something well to the right of conservatism. From that perspective, of course most everything appears to be leftist including conservatism itself.

> While you've made valid points for consideration about the blue tribe's blindspots, you're riffing off a different definition of anti-social than I used.

I know—my point is that you’re using a quite liberal sense of what’s “anti-social.”

> You're talking about larger appreciation of social conformity, where I'm talking about creating immediate conflict.

During her confirmation hearing, Judge Ketanji Jackson Brown claimed that she “wasn’t aware” that the Christian school where she was a board member espoused traditional views on gender and abortion. Why did a Black woman feel the need to not only clarify her own views, but actively disassociate herself from an organization that is completely normal for a Black woman to be associated with? Why did she need to imply that she might have acted differently had she known that a Christian school affiliated with a Black baptist church taught traditional Christian doctrine (as if that was a surprise?) You don’t think it was because of the threat of conflict from the activist left?

> Furthermore, US society is deeply rooted in individualism and so professing individualism is not leftist.

The US is more individualist than say China, sure. But most of the US, from the Puritan-descended WASP northeast, to the Midwest, to the South, never struck me as especially individualist. The west coast, sure, and maybe Colorado or Arizona. Recall, the US is the most religious developed country in the world—in terms of how many people pray daily, it ranks up there with Iran. The rhetoric of rugged pioneer individualism yields to communalism pretty readily in most of the country. In the small Iowa town where my wife went to high school, sports practices were all scheduled to allow kids to also attend church youth groups.

> Why did [Judge Ketanji Jackson Brown] need to imply that she might have acted differently [during her confirmation hearing]

Because she was looking for approval from the Democratic Party? Are you asking why the Democratic Party cares about the opinions of the "activist left" ?

> But most of the US, from the Puritan-descended WASP northeast, to the Midwest, to the South, never struck me as especially individualist

Religion in the Northeast seems more like a token thing rather than a way of life (eg "Christmas and Easter Catholic"), and despite communal structures the entire US is still steeped in individualism. One of the current major political issues of the political right, anti-mask / anti-vaccine, rests mainly on appeals to individual freedom! It's front and center in the founding documents - "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".

It's worse than that. It's that right-wing conspiracists already vote for everything that they support, so there's absolutely no need to pander to them. In fact, you can fund them while pushing woke PR. It's the potentially class-conscious who should be pushed to see the world as a bunch of benevolent corporations pushing fairness against the "white working class" forces of darkness.

Okay, so you are the first person to discover that corporations are not politically motivated but only financially motivated, and they manufacture the appearance of political concern to pursue their financial interests. Nice, cool.

Now explain to me what is wrong with political factions publicly criticizing corporations under the guise of wanting political and moral change at the corporation, when in reality, they are attacking the corporation's financial interests, and their goal is to render their own brand of politics the one that commercial interests bend the knee to.

You have made the empiricist's error: conflating what he discovers to be, with what ought to be.

Please omit personal swipes from your comments here. You can make your substantive points without that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> GoFundMe should be political neutral

Why? Are you advocating for ISIS to be able to do a gofundme?

There is a whole world of opinions besides leftism and islamic extremism.

Why shouldn't they be able to? Gofundme shouldn't be in the business of picking winners and losers. If someone wants to collect money for a cause, then Gofundme should be a neutral platform for that.

It's up to individuals whether they want to donate to any particular cause.

Way to strawman!!

> advocating for ISIS to be able to do a gofundme

if ISIS isn't under US financial sanctions, then yes. GFM is not, and should not, be in the business of gatekeeping people's desire to fund causes they believe in, as long as those causes are legal.

If ISIS is just a political ideology then you have a point. But it's a terrorist organization. I am not sure what's going on in your head. Are you going to argue about terrorism is just a subjective label?

Hacker News used to be about things that mattered to programmers and startups, etc. Now we are turning into yet another Reddit scream box. This type of article does not belong here. The comments keep turning into pointless vitriol.

It's always like this on the weekend.

That's not accurate. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.

Yeah I'm done with this website. The state of these comments is an absolute embarrassment, this is purely just a misinformation flamewar

I wouldn’t even care. The internet always is a shot show when it comes to politics.

It’s the absolute arrogance of the community, pretending that they’re above this at just about any other time.

While I agree most of the comments are garbage, this is just one thread and you can leave with the back button. There are hundreds of other non political posts a day

I hate both the protest group and desantis but honestly he’s right.

The only reason gofundme (or any org with similar practices) do this is because they know that some people will miss the deadline, and the it becomes pure profit.

Did you not read the article? There is no deadline. All donations are going to be automatically refunded.

After GoFundMe's cut of course.

Really? My reading was that the donations will be refunded in their entirety.

I will say that I find GoFundMe's tactics around fees to be distasteful. It's been a while, but I recall having selected a donation amount and then being asked to pay an extra fee "so the charity doesn't have to bear this burden" or some such thing. Basically they just wanted to increase the donation amount (which increases their fee), and they were using guilt as a tactic.

...This is just incorrect.

That was not their original plan. They saw the pushback coming from many fronts.

Indeed, and the article mentions that too.

That wasn’t the case when I read the article. They changed their policy after being threatened with legal action.

Hate is a pretty strong word for people resisting government overreach.

It's a reasonable word for people bullying a homeless shelter though. There's always some nuance

GoFundMe almost immediately changed their policy and instead directly refunded everyone

If this was a matter of politics, I think their politics would actually push them to make this decision more because the alternative was to make the organization that organized it choose another charity to give it to. That charity would likely be something that does not align with the politics of the average GFM employee

They changed their policy after it kicked off a massive internet shitstorm. It's no excuse for their initial, blatantly antipathic announcement.

And a massive wave of CC chargebacks

Why do people have to request refunds? Shouldn't they able to do that automatically?

The article says they've changed their stance and that's exactly what they're doing.

They "changed their stance" after DeSantis initiated a fraud investigation against them for their original "stance".

They also received a massive amount of chargebacks precipitating this decision.

the article says the opposite, that the investigation started after it was announced they would be refunded automatically.

DeSantis initiated this after they changed their stance. This is purely a political move. Just go check out patriots.win (the successor to /r/thedonald). They're still completely convinced that GFM took all the money and is giving it to BLM. I'm not even being hyperbolic, check it out

DeSantis probably just picked up on the rightwing twitter chatter and is trying to ride the wave

The original thedonald.win was shut down by legal pressure from the White House. Patriots.win appears to be just the extremists from the old platform.

No... I was following along with thedonald.win for a long time. They were preparing for a transition to patriots.win for months before they ditched the old domain. It came from some letter of Trump's who vaguely hinted towards starting a new party called the "Patriots Party". Obviously that never came to pass, but the name stuck

It's literally the exact same platform, style, users, posts, etc. Nothing got "shut down"

My gut feeling is that GFM wanted to keep their tips, and this was a "good" way of doing so.

However it's also a little complicated since some of the money has been dispersed to the organizers (most of which went to Tamara Lich, according to the GFM page.) I guess they'll prorate the refunds or absorb the loss?

Yeah, I'm calling visa to try and do a chargeback. I expected the money to go to the cause, and not be refunded less a 'tip'.

A good cause would be a public health initiative.

Many would argue that retaining basic civil liberties and freedoms is foundational to public health.

If anyone wants to know a little more about what their demands are:

> SCGGC will effective as of midnight on this ___, day of ___________, 2021, instruct all levels of the Federal, Provincial, Territorial, and Municipal governments to re-instate all employees in all branches of governments and, not limited to promote the same to the private industry and institutional sectors employees with full lawful employment rights prior to the wrongful and unlawful dismissals that stem from the SARS-CoV-2 (and not limited to SARS-CoV-2 subsequent variations) vaccine passport mandates

https://canada-unity.com/mou/

I find it strange that people opposing funding the Canada truckers need to resort to a DDOS of GiveSendGo[1].

[1] https://twitter.com/GiveSendGo/status/1489983077912924160

I must be the only person here who doesn't already know about these trucking protests; I'm having trouble establishing the basic facts of what is in dispute. Who exactly is required to be vaccinated?

It seems like the fraction of truckers who engaged in cross-border trucking with the US were subject to a Canadian federal vaccination mandate, which applied to some workers in the transportation sector as well as many federal workers, but this requirement was dropped a couple of weeks ago for cross border trucking.[1]

Are the truckers still protesting even though the requirement for cross border truckers to be vaccinated was dropped? Do they have some further demand?

Is anyone here able to kindly cite a (non-editorial) journalistic source which summarizes these events?

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canadian-truckers-sta...

The requirement was not dropped, I'm surprised Reuters hasn't corrected that article.

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/in-for-a-rough-winter...

https://www.bing.com/search?q=canada+trucker+vaccine+require...

So according to these sources, Canadian truckers don't have to be vaccinated. They just have to quarantine if they have symptomatic COVID.

The first link says "On Wednesday evening, a Canadian Border Services Agency spokesperson said truckers would remain exempt from vaccination, testing and quarantine rules — a reversal from what the government had said publicly just hours before."

My top hit on the search is a primary government source stating that: "A Canadian truck driver who is not fully vaccinated can't be denied entry into Canada—Canadian citizens, persons registered as Indians under the Indian Act and permanent residents may enter Canada by right. [...] Any individual who is symptomatic upon arrival to Canada will be directed to a Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) official and will be directed to isolate for 10 days from the time they enter Canada. As of January 15, 2022, unvaccinated or partially vaccinated foreign national truck drivers, coming to Canada from the US by land, will be directed back to the United States."

See, the entire reason these protests are stupid, is because what they're actually protesting is US policy that requires them to be vaccinated or test negative to enter the US. You are correct, they will not be turned away at the border coming back to Canada.

They are protesting US policy in Ottawa because this is really auxillary to the political goals of the organizers.

It just might be the case that you’re focusing on the straw that broke the camels back while ignoring the bale of straw in its entirety.

If you're a trucker, this is the bale of straw. Other restrictions don't matter nearly as much even if you put all of them together.

> Starting on Saturday, truckers coming back into Canada from the U.S. will have to show proof of vaccination or face quarantine and testing requirements. If they’re symptomatic the quarantine could last up to 10 days.

This is the important part.

Regardless the trucker topics, the dispute around media bias is very solid to me. We have a good deal less variety than the US, CBC is very “metric” driven, click bait. It is kind of like if NPR was the main source of news for everyone. Regional news is drying up fast, to boot. There isn’t really “other news”.

“Kitchen sink” finance, inflationary issues are also a big part of the protests imo

It’s also quite frankly a massive dance party, which people have been missing out on

ie protest is (right now) seemingly a bit of a conservative mishmash, not just trucking dispute

I think GFM did a massive blunder by not declaring that they will immediately refund the donations. I can understand their practical considerations - it probably costs them something to refund, but they should have just eaten the costs. Instead, they made it look like they are seizing the money - which looks very much like breach of trust. If I give you something with the promise that you will bring it to my friend, and you decide you don't like it so you donate it to the charity, I'd be pissed. Yes, I know GFM probably has a 200-page user agreement that makes you confirm your soul and your firstborn belongs to them and you have absolutely no rights whatsoever, but nobody reads that and everybody has expectations how this works, and "we'll seize all the money and send them to a charity" is wildly outside those expectations.

Gofundme is in the trust business. You have to have a lot of trust in them or you won't use them. They seem to be pivoting to a strategy that encourages distrust.

This is pretty much how a lot of people view gofundme now:

https://babylonbee.com/news/gofundme-freezes-funds-for-child...

They are a joke.

I don't know if that's true. I think the participation of many white nationalists in the trucker movement was a disaster waiting to happen for GFM. Ultimately the police were the ones who told them to take it down and they agreed the threat of violence violated their TOS

They followed their standard protocol to offer refunds and then donate any unrefunded money to charities of the choosing of the main organizers. And they've even changed their policy to issue direct refunds instead. I think they're clearly still in the business of trying to maintain their trust

I reported a funeral fundraiser for a criminal gang where i live a few weeks ago to Gofundme. These funerals involve reckless, high speed driving by hundreds of bikies wearing Swastika vests who hurl violence/verbal abuse at people if they happen to get in the way. I provided all this info and they didn't do anything.

A reasonable person would think a Gofundme for a group who derive their income from the methamphetamine trade would be higher risk than a bunch of truckies, but then again it didn't raise near $10m usd.

This is the kind of thing the gang does during funerals, for reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A30VPyeXVv4

Behold, the new "Get off my lawn!"

A different perspective on the source of funds (ignore the clickbait at the top of the article and search down for “suspect”): https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/02/04/opinion/startlin...

A relevant blog post from someone in Ottawa about his interactions with the protesters, that adds some context to the protesters

https://maybury.ca/the-reformed-physicist/2022/02/03/a-night...

Anyone have commentary on how cryptocurrencies will step in to this space? Platforms like GoFundMe provide such a thin veneer of value. It's easy for them to overstep their bounds to the point where it's not worth it. If I were a journalist raising funds for a documentary I would be wary of such platforms.

(Didn't see this mentioned elsewhere in the thread)

Any cryptocurrency, upon becoming established enough to notice, will be regulated at the point of fiat conversion, or as soon as it gains legal tender status. Cryptocurrency enthusiasm is completely oblivious to the fact that currencies are legitimate because they are recognized as such by what people acknowledge as the authorities.

Finance regulation is a wench like that.

Why exactly should GoFundMe refund the money? How is this different from other fundraisers?

I believe in vaccines but I don't understand why GoFundMe can't accept trucker donations.

The difference was likely the threat of GFM getting involved in expensive legal situations since the protests were growing increasingly violent. The Canadian Trucking Alliance itself pointed out that most of the protestors had no connection with trucking. Other investigations found a lot of the participants had ties to white nationalist movements.[0] GFM is in a tricky spot. They prolly realized being hated by ant vaxxers was less of a headache than being accused of helping white nationalists. Their own public announcement simply stated that the cops pressured them to take it down due to reports of violence (which violates their TOS)

[0] https://globalnews.ca/news/8543281/covid-trucker-convoy-orga...

If protests starting to get more violent is not acceptable then why did GFM continue the funding for BLM and Chop/chaz?

Also, this protest is not about being pro or anti vax. It is about mandates.

Sure, and Unite the Right was about unity

If you want to see the spokesman of the freedom convoy directly, this is an interview by Dave Rubin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEXy8yrjYqw

Rubin is Jewish/gay, Dichter is Jewish. But according to Trudeau they are homophobes, racists and white supremacists. The recording is from shortly before the deplatforming, so it not up to date.

I spent a decent part of my adult life in Canada and I can’t believe what in God’s name is happening to that place.

Canada is experiencing a severe housing bubble at the backdrop of Chinese snow washing, wage stagnation is real and middle class is slowly getting wiped out. The only thing keeping the GDP at the level it is is high level of immigration which favours the wealthy in the name of a “point based immigration system”. The ruling liberal party is genuinely out of touch and the PM knows nothing but virtue signaling. The conservatives are also facing a leadership crisis since they lack largely a coordination and single thread holding the party. NDP is a joke and virtually does nothing and the electoral system is almost broken thanks to this three party system (oh and then there is Bloc which I don’t even want to get started on). Trudeau was elected prime minister with less than 33% votes. The whole COVID crisis was used by Trudeau to call a snap election and then they don’t seem to have a plan to embrace the endemic outlook. This whole vax mandates for truckers was such a distraction at the backdrop of inflation and struggling service sector. I keep thinking what are these people thinking? Any decent policy advisors would say now is not the time to do things out of spite against the people who are critical to supply chain.

As a Canadian, it's been utterly shocking to watch our country crumble in the last few years. This summer I'll be moving away for good.

In the last decade I've seen most of my family leave for the US due to the higher incomes. I always kept hope that maybe Canada would get better. It hasn't, it's gotten very bad. The insane level of immigration has eroded away any leverage the working class has. Now you see all that frustration coming out, on both sides of the political spectrum, with each side blaming the other.

Housing and necessities are un-affordable for everyone, the divisive rhetoric has turned society against each other. Simply being in Canada is depressing now. I just got back from 2 months in Europe, the difference is shocking.

I've been looking to move to Canada (vs moving to US due to more sane social services like healthcare and pension system), is what you are describing present all over Canada or just in some parts of it?

I would answer that it's centered in a few major cities. The big problem with Canada is that political power is so concentrated in Montreal, Toronto, and to a lesser extent Ottawa and Vancouver that the views of the rest of the country are ignored, so there is not really an escape. It would be like if all US government policy was set by the Bay Area and NYC

Everywhere, albeit to varying levels. Canada's healthcare is a joke; it's 'free', but it's a joke. And the highest possible pension payout wouldn't pay half my rent today.

If you have the opportunity to move the US and have your employer pay for your healthcare, your quality of life and income will be much, much higher than you could ever expect in Canada. The main thing is that incomes in the US, especially for tech, are much, much higher while cost of living is lower.

While I can understand the healthcare part, what about US public pensions (Social Security) is not sane? The US public pension is quite generous compared to the rest of the developed world, including Canada.

The US can be accused of many things, but having a poor public pension isn't one of them.

Canada on the whole has been poisoned by high property values. Instead of investing in making things, everyone is all in on housing speculation.

My experience has been essentially the opposite of the person you're replying to.

Health care where I am is great, I can see my primary care doctor mostly same day or next day and the odd tests I've needed have never been any kind of wait longer than 3 weeks (for non-urgent tests). Immediate care for actual emergencies, I've been seen right away. It's a triage system, so if you go to the emergency department at the hospital with the sniffles you could wait a bunch of hours.

Yes, there's a huge housing crisis and yes it's an area of concern. There's some issues here in that the real difference-makers are controlled by cities. There's a LOT of NIMBYism.

I haven't really seen evidence of Canada "crumbling"; just a lot of people pushing that narrative whenever they're despairing over their own fortunes. Could it be better? Absolutely.

> Health care where I am is great, I can see my primary care doctor mostly same day or next day and the odd tests I've needed have never been any kind of wait longer than 3 weeks (for non-urgent tests).

Try living outside Canada. I used to think healthcare was great as a young male... (men typically don't interact with the healthcare system as often as women for biological reasons)

My girlfriend is pregnant. She's from the Czech Republic. We were just in the Czech Republic for 2 months. 3 weeks for non-urgent tests? Try a day. As in phone the clinic, get a test for the NEXT day. During the Omicron wave. She had bloodwork done, an ultrasound, x-ray for a foot injury, treatment for said injury, dental work done, etc... No wait times for anything. No wait times at the clinic. No need for a primary care doctor (something which many Canadians don't have because of a shortage of doctors).

Canadians take the sad state of affairs as normal and actually believe our government's propaganda that the rest of the world works the same way. It doesn't.

> I haven't really seen evidence of Canada "crumbling"

Go to another developed country. Live for awhile. The only people who think Canada's doing OK are the ones who never left.

And on an individual level; any country is great if you have enough money. Doesn't mean society is OK.

I am sure Czech healthcare system has been subjectively better in your experience. But I hesitate to call it objectively better than Canada's, given that life expectancy at birth is 3 years shorter in Czechia compared to Canada. Something must be causing the disparity, and usually that tends to be the healthcare.

I can tell you why the disparity: many Czechs who are still alive were born and raised under communism and carry all the generational trauma caused by growing up under poverty and dictatorships. As a country it wasn't really 'developed' until quite recently. And, well, old people are the most likely to die, for obvious reasons. Funny enough, Czech life expectancy at 60 is exactly 3 years less than Canada's. Meanwhile there's no way to truly measure the life expectancy of someone born today.

But if you go check metrics like doctors per capita, beds per capita, how many clinics there are, insurance coverage, etc..., it's shocking. Twice as many doctors per capita as Canada, for example.

Edit - for example, under 5 year old mortality rate for Czech Republic is 3.2 per 1000 while for Canada it's 4.9...

> My girlfriend is pregnant. She's from the Czech Republic. We were just in the Czech Republic for 2 months. 3 weeks for non-urgent tests? Try a day. As in phone the clinic, get a test for the NEXT day. During the Omicron wave. She had bloodwork done, an ultrasound, x-ray for a foot injury, treatment for said injury, dental work done, etc... No wait times for anything. No wait times at the clinic. No need for a primary care doctor (something which many Canadians don't have because of a shortage of doctors).

My partner had a similar experience when she went through her pregnancy during the first wave of covid (when everything was less certain). A pregnant woman is going to always have things like soft tissue ultrasounds before a guy with a light sports injury (my example of having to wait 3 weeks).

Your pregnant partner and I with a light sports injury are, in no good healthcare system, going to be given equal priority.

For an actual important scan like an X-Ray of a broken bone, it's always been immediate.

> Go to another developed country. Live for awhile. The only people who think Canada's doing OK are the ones who never left.

This is an awful assumption to make of anyone, especially anyone in a tech forum online IME. We're one of the most mobile workforces. I've absolutely lived and worked for lengthy stretches in other countries and experienced life there. I've obviously not lived everywhere but I suspect almost every country has its own pain points.

It's clear from your various posts though that you're stumping for the Czech Republic, and that's great, I'm glad you found a spot to make you happy.

I agree with everything you're saying. I'm hoping the current protests are going to be a catalyst for Canadians who for the most part are apathetic and apolitical to wake up and notice what has happened to our country and finally push back. We're so far gone though I don't know how we can actually reestablish ourselves though: in particular, our political parties are so hollowed out of anyone remotely competent and interested in the future of the country that regardless of the will of the people, I don't see how it can be represented.

We've also literally created millions of crazy people with all the covid fear propaganda, and I don't know how we reintegrate them into society.

I could go on, we're in a lot of trouble.

Where are you moving to?

Prague, Czech Republic. SO is Czech so we're moving mainly for the lifestyle, culture, plus now with a kid on the way we're concerned about access to education, healthcare, etc... Where we live in Canada it's literally $1 million to purchase any kind of housing whatsoever... We could make it work but I have no family here anyway and for the same money we can live much better there, plus be close to her family...

>The only thing keeping the GDP at the level it is is high level of immigration which favours the wealthy in the name of a “point based immigration system”.

Is that supposed to be bad? The main factors that contribute to your points are language skills, education, work experience, age, and job offer. It's true that those requirements favor the wealthy, but would canada be better served by immigrants that don't speak english, are inexperienced, old, and don't have a job lined up?

I think what they are trying to say is that a country can always increase its GDP by increasing population. Of course, if 2x the amount of people that are eating a pie that is 1.1x bigger, the quality of life has dramatically decreased. For the people immigrating, Canada is obviously appealing just simply from a security point of view. All things equal, they don't really care if their quality of life is the same as long as they won't randomly be killed.

Of course, this all needs to be substantiated with facts to actually show the cause of the issue. I honestly don't know if Canada's immigration levels are too high and causing problems for the middle class or if the OP is just angry that an Indian family now operates their local Husky.

I think it promotes skilled Canadians emigrating, along with keeping poor places poor. Instead of having competitive compensation, Canadian companies hire cheaper skilled labour from abroad.

If we got more cheap unskilled labour, we could expand our whole economy to be rich enough to pay for the expensive skilled Canadians. Making a ton of poor people richer ads a lot more total value than adding a couple of rich people

Canada's birth-rate is bellow what is necessary to sustain or grow the population. Without immigration Canada's population would be shrinking.

If you think it is bad now, imagine how bad would it be if the majority of the population was in retirement. Sustaining a pension scheme (or a healthy economy for pension funds) becomes very hard, plus all of the services required to keep the society running would be greatly reduced.

Canada's immigration system seems one of the better I've looked into, skills, language, education and job offer all have to be accounted to get in.

Very interesting that they are completely refunding all of the donors automatically.

I flagged this, because this is the most toxic ”discussion” I’ve ever seen on HN.

Was already flagged and the flags were later cleared.

Hmm. It's certainly bad, but it can and does get so much worse.

One thing most Americans don't understand about Canadian politics how much effort is put into limiting the influence of money. Corporations cannot make political donations in several provinces. Even unions can't contribute in some provinces. Individual donations to political parties are capped. On top of that, political parties have to adhere to campaign spending limits during election periods (although some do circumvent caps using third party PAC's).

In Alberta, where the organizer[1] of this GoFundMe is based, campaign spending limits for a provincial election are capped at $2,121,368 for a political party[2].

This GoFundMe just raised five times what an entire political party is allowed to spend during an election in Alberta.

Ostensibly, this cash was to be used to pay for gas and motel stays for those involved in the protest, but those truckers were never going to see a tenth of what Lich was given. Lich is a founding member of several Western separatist parties. Those parties, although they do have legitimate grievances that find some sympathy with moderates, take an approach that is wildly unpopular. Namely, separatism. They don't raise much money as a result. It's likely that Lich would have funnelled the remainder of this GoFundMe into support for one or more of the political parties she's affiliated with.

What could have happened is that, during the next few elections in Western provinces, we'd have seen a bevy of implausibly well funded PAC's shilling for Wildrose, Maverick, etc.. Their ads would have been similar in quality and quantity to those of the major parties. That could have significantly shifted the polls.

What about Lich's goals for the protest itself? As someone who wants to see Canada break up into several smaller nations, it's in her interest to demonstrate how weak and ineffectual the federal government is. What better way to do that than by blockading the capital and several key trade routes at the U.S. border while the federal government dithers and provincial governments do nothing?

Keeping money out of politics is a sisyphean task, but it's one most Canadians embrace. When GoFundMe's can raise this much cash in the blink of an eye, we have to recognize that the game has been fundamentally transformed yet again. In this instance, all that stopped a politically transformative amount of cash from flowing into a fringe party's hands was the hesitation of a foreign corporation. I fully expect regulations for political fund-raising through services like GoFundMe are going to be in the works shortly.

[1]https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/who-is-tamara-lich... [2]https://www.elections.ab.ca/finance/expense-limits/

Keeping money our of Canadian politics has in no way democratized it, and I would argue the opposite. Our political leaders are dominated by a small group of elites (men from specific parts of Montreal). These incumbents would be threatened by any new money flowing into the system and would rather trade on their legacy networks. We could greatly benefit from politics being shaken up here with some outside donations.

Money out of politics is one thing, this is politicians fearing when people unite for a cause they dislike

King

This sort of discussion never goes well, but using GoFundMe to finance occupations, especially across national borders, is an incredibly dangerous game.

If a GoFundMe to harrass and harangue Ron DeSantis -- to effectively sponsor people to park outside his home and blast horns, among other things -- would he be okay with that? How about if Canadians paid millions for people to park on US interstates? Is that okay?

This is entirely outside of the mission of GoFundMe. And it's interesting how exactly the same group of people lamenting the paying of bail for BLM protesters are falling in line with rights for this trucker group to harass and occupy Canadian cities.

It's a protest not an occupation

You obviously don’t live in Ottawa.

It's obviously a peaceful protest*. The word "occupation" here is already spin from the side that wants to shut it down and is trying to build a case for doing so.

Peaceful protest involves physically assembling and making noise. That is no doubt unpleasant both for those who disagree with the protestors and those who live in the neighborhood, but the right to do this in public is fundamental and vital in democratic society. I thought we were all raised to understand that? For the life of me I can't understand people who are so ready to trash those rights just because they don't happen to agree with a cause. Either these are democratic rights or they aren't, and if they are then they apply to everybody.

* Edit: I shouldn't have said obviously. I should have said: from what I've seen. Some people are posting that there have been violent things going on, but those claims have come without evidence. In the few cases where I have seen objective information, such claims have turned out to be exaggerated. If I see objective information showing that the protestors have turned violent, I will change my mind. (As long as it is clear that it really was the protestors and not someone trying to make them look bad, since that kind of thing also happens at protests.)

It is literally, by every definition, an occupation.

People came in and brought homes with them (sleeper cabs, RVs, etc). Now they have set up permanent structures such as kitchens and other facilities (today they brought in a sauna), and have been stating repeatedly that they are in for the long haul.

There is a reason that's called an occupation. A protest is normally a discomfort for the protester. Enduring the elements. Going without. But waving a flag and chanting slogans that convey a message. Here we have a bunch of people in transport trucks blasting their horn 24/7.

GoFundMe literally had no problem with CHAZ/CHOP and BLM protest funding in the middle of a pandemic.

So we agree, GFM should have nothing to do with any occupation, right? You agree with this, correct?

You think that I'm some sort of partisan in this -- perhaps a projection -- and you caught me in hypocrisy. But you didn't. Financing protests is an incredibly dangerous game.

I was against BLM justified violence and looting, as well as the various "free" zones.

I was against the railway blockades in Canada (due to complex aboriginal issues)

I am against the trucker occupations and criminal harassment of the citizens of Ottawa and other jurisdictions (and I think they should be layered with so many fines their trucks become the property of the state).

I'm remarkably consistent on this. Law and order is good. Democracy is good.

You may have trapped yourself in a different web of hypocritical rhetoric:

Would you also be against civil rights sit-ins and GoFundMe being used to support those?

It's hypocritical because of something you imagined?

Why would a sit-in, or any similar event, EVER need sponsorship? When has it ever needed sponsorship?

Very impressive dodge of the question.

Let’s say a sit in did need support. Do you think that’s a valid use of GoFundMe?

Is this what your rhetoric is reduced to? Demanding that people answer for invented, imaginary hypocrisy? I didn't "dodge" a completely stupid, manufactured question because I have literally no onus to answer it.

GFM shouldn't be used to sponsor *ANY* protest. I've said that REPEATEDLY, and consistently. A protest that needs sponsorship is not a legitimate protest.

You realize the Civil Rights movements in the US had substantial fundraising? The March to Selma? How do you think people were fed? Where did they sleep?

So by your logic the Civil Rights movement was not legitimate?

I think his point is that only well-off people, who can fund themselves, should be allowed to protest. Poor people, who can't support themselves protesting, should have no right to do that.

Do you think if the relatively tiny sponsorship didn't happen, the civil rights movement wouldn't have happened? I specifically talked to protests needing sponsorship, and in the case of the current occupation the bloated GFM -- funded by the far-right in the US who have achieved such a bucolic utopia of governance they now want to export it -- spurred on the participation. It legitimized it. This was nothing before everyone was chomping at the bit to get their slice of a big pie.

"How do you think people were fed? Where did they sleep?"

They literally slept in fields and went days with negligible food. In Ottawa protesters are sleeping in hotels and in $600,000 sleeper cabs running 24/7 and are eating like kings. They have built various facilities including a sauna. They are treating it like a fun vacation. What a shocking contrast.

All of this makes the other reply to you simply incredible.

And as the other response mentioned, demonstrations were in fact funded in the past. Getting all defensive and outraged is one way to avoid an answer.

"And as the other response mentioned, demonstrations were in fact funded in the past"

You think this is a retort. Amazing.

"Getting all defensive and outraged is one way to avoid an answer"

Demanding an answer out of someone, especially when they've spoken directly to the topic repeatedly, and then announcing an imagined, projected hypocrisy, is an unbelievably ignorant, boorish tactic. I might just say a troll tactic. Did you learn this from Tucker Carlson? It has absolutely no place on HN.

I think the point that has the previous poster concerned is that you seem to be asserting that anything that requires capital allocation to perpetuate it's effectiveness as a disruptive protest isn't a protest. This thereby de-facto caps the effectiveness of any protest to something that can be quaintly noted and largely dismissed by the establishment.

This ultimately degenerates around the extremes, and I believe that is what the poster is concerned about; that your definition basically bakes in the assumption that any protest must necessarily be so minor in nature as to not overly disrupt, when in reality, the point of a truly effective protest is to disrupt.

Assume that somehow a fit of madness took hold of the Highest authorities in the land and sufficient agency to implement and enforce dicta in a resistable, but still a threatening degree to the nation as a whole. Assume quite literally the entire country except the perpetrators disagreed.

Now apply your rule. We've got a situation where literally everyone but the people wrecking things is ready to organize resistance. Your rule places the Authorities on a privileged position of presumptive legitimacy where none exists. Only token protests capable of being safely ignored due to transient nature and poor coordination will be tolerated. Anything (even peaceful in the extreme, literally being somewhere, taking up space, breathing air, and just existing), but requiring extensive/non-trivial logistics becomes an act against which force of law is "justifiable" to disperse.

Personally? I don't accept your view. If there are enough people that feel like their capital is best allocated making themselves a pain-in-the-ass to <authority of the week>, that's their perogative.

...Now, given, the cross-border jurisdictional complications in this case, I will give you this seems different because people in another nation are funding disruptive activity in yours. If it were only coming from domestic funders, that'd be one thing. The external funding elevates this to something else. However, this is a complication that has been long in coming to the forefront, and poses diplomatic questions currently above my paygrade.

However, I'm still more sympathetic to the protestors here in the same manner that I disagree with the Taft-Hartley Acts ban on organized secondary striking. Ultimately, I believe the People (for any unit Nation's definition thereof which is a completely different thing to kavetch about) are the ultimate authorities on what is legitimate, and what isn't. If they decide to fund something that the government, or even the rest of the populace doesn't like, ultimately, the vote of no confidence inherent in the action elevates their behavior to civil disobedience.

Which I am totally okay with.

Note: the implicit okay evaporates once people start getting violent, actually committing crimes (where said crimes are not transparently "stop being inconvenient" crimes, a la assault/battery/arson/murder/larceny/grand theft/kidnapping/property destruction).

>So we agree, GFM should have nothing to do with any occupation, right? You agree with this, correct?

They should have a consistent standard one way or the other.

Maybe, but if the popular discourse doesn’t use the word “occupation” for the likes of CHAZ, then I think it’s fair to avoid it here as well. We should strive toward fairness and away from partisan favoritism IMHO.

Everyone referred to the Seattle occupation as an occupation. They literally called it the "Capital Hill Occupied Protest". A simple Google search finds endless pages of media reports calling it an occupation.

So wait...

Just to be clear: Are you asserting that the fact people are building/taking into account logistics to protest for the long haul with regards to something they vehemently disagree with detracts from the legitimacy of the act of protesting?

If so, wow. That's low-key\backhand authoritarian to a T; defining legitimate protest as something that isn't in the grand scheme of things effective at disrupting something enough people disagree with, and anything that does make a dent either terrorism or something else.

"So wait...

Just to be clear"

The intro to an always disingenuous comment.

"If so, wow."

Yet more.

Protests throughout time have been at hardship and discomfort of the participants. When your "protest" are sleeper cabs (in vehicles regulated through monopoly by the government, which seems like an easy lever) and hotel rooms, now with saunas and food prep rooms, funded by the American right, and your "protest" is laying on horns 24/7, there is zero legitimacy there.

Canada had railway blockades in early 2020 that were groups of people literally sitting in the cold for days on end on railway tracks. And the interesting paradox is that the Canadian "right" were demanding that the police go full stormtrooper on them. Now this same group is cheering on parking a transport truck in the middle of the road and blasting horns around the clock. Bizarre times.

Since when was the efficiency of how a group protested used to determine the validity of a protest? Slacktivism, or using social media to protest, generally costs participants nothing in the way of comfort. Neither does walking in a street on a beautiful day in the summer chanting one’s beliefs. Is there any video evidence of honking horns all night? I’ve read on Twitter that they stop honking at 10PM because they are not protesting the Ottawa citizens. This is a legitimate protest by workers and the side that is usually pro-worker seems to be siding with the government because the intent of the protest has been declared wrong-think by the PM.

Are you being truthful about the 24/7 horn blasting? I’ve seen reports on Twitter that the convoy stops horns at 10 PM because they’re not protesting the Canadian people/Ottawa citizens. Is there any video of the horns honking 24/7?

A friend was shoved into a snowbank by a protester because she wore a mask. I was verbally assaulted for the same while skating on the canal. They're not peaceful.

I think the real struggle is understanding the degree to which they are peaceful or not. Obviously nothing is black or white.

As an example, I was once shoved by a person. People are not peaceful

Isn't it exactly that then? You were shoved into a snowbank once and put this forward as an example of people not being peaceful.

Unsuspecting and uninvolved people are being shoved by protesters. Therefore, this is not a peaceful protest.

I think most would agree that not every single protester has been peaceful at all times. Now what?

That's it. We've successfully answered the question of if it is a peaceful protest.

now we go back to step 1.

>I think the real struggle is understanding the degree to which they are peaceful or not. Obviously nothing is black or white.

I would also add, the next struggle is what it impact it should have on our reaction, if any.

Obviously violence has nothing to do if someone if right or wrong, but it does have to do with if they should be tolerated. At what point do we no longer tolerate protests based on some violent indivduals?

What if their leaders endorse violence? If 1% of protesters are violent? If 0.001% are violent?

These are the real questions, and not particularly new ones.... There was a lot of violence from US civil rights protesters, people even got violent at MLK protests.

But still, there is a limit somewhere. I think protests should be shut down if the leaders endorse violence. Beyond that, it is really hard to say. Maybe percent is a bad way to think about it, and we should look at damage, IDK.

Ah I see what you were meaning now. I agree, while we could say zero violence in a perfect world, we know that is it rife with conflicting interpretations in the real world.

I agree with the leaders endorsing violence being a clear market for an unacceptable protest.

Beyond that, I would probably leave it to some authority like a judge. They could make the call based on number/severity of incidents, etc.

> Unsuspecting and uninvolved people are being shoved by protesters.

In fact, an unsuspecting and uninvolved person was shoved by a protester.

BLM protestors were going around pouring drinks on diner's heads, and eating their food off their plates, then assaulting them. GoFundMe had no issues with that.

I doubt that.

Yeah? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxjJPZF4P_s

But why were you wearing a mask outside?

This is victim blaming.

I live in Ottawa. This is not simply unpleasant noise that the residents downtown are being forced to live through. This is a large number of transport trucks and various general trucks blowing their horns throughout the day and night. There are multiple trucks driving around with train horns which are extremely loud. A lawsuit has been filed against this tactic being used by the protesters (https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/class-action-suit-...)

Nor is it limited to auditory harassment. Some examples: - Convoy protesters harass local shelter for free food. It's not that big a stretch to characterize this as stealing from the homeless since that's specifically who the food is meant for. https://twitter.com/sghottawa/status/1487854425368633344

- Rocks thrown at ambulance as well as anti-asian slurs towards the paramedic https://ottawa.citynews.ca/local-news/rocks-hurled-at-ottawa...

- Protester dances atop national monument "Tomb of the Fallen Soldier" https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/police-look-to-identify-suspect-in... Explanation for the monument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Tomb_of_the_Unknown_S...

Protesters refusing to wear masks within hotels and subjecting employees of said hotels who have given no consent to this behaviour - https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/truck-convoy-polic...

Protesters flying Nazi flags - https://twitter.com/yonifreedhoff/status/1487517973422223374...

Downtown mall forced to close as protesters enter and refuse to wear masks - https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/rideau-centre-clos...

I personally know people who have been verbally intimidated for wearing a mask, one who was screamed at and pushed to the ground for wearing a mask, and another who was threatened with rape as she walked into her place of work.

A number of businesses have closed for the weekend due to safety concerns and have subsequently been brigaded with negative comment and reviews on their google listings.

Of course, you can make the claim that the participants are not actually protesters but could be false flag, paid actors, antifa or whatever. I personally think that's reaching. I've lived here for many years, seeing many large protests come and go, and I've never seen such an influx of hateful incidents.

I fully agree with their right to protest and sympathize with some of their complaints but these tactics are in no way acceptable or peaceful. People need rest and these protesters are denying this to a huge amount of people. People should feel safe walking through the streets of their city and people absolutely do not feel safe walking close to the protests because of the many examples of harassment.

Apologies for the length of the reply but, as you can imagine, it's very disappointing to see these events minimized.

Edit: Fireworks now being launched from a downtown street with many residential buildings close by https://twitter.com/berkley33/status/1490136109061484545

It does seem pretty clear that just like Trump in the US attracted all the haters, racists and Nazis and their adjacent friends (which wasn't the same thing as his massive support among the angry working class white cohort), this protest is doing the same in Canada. And now you have this weird thing that American far right-wingers like DeSantis are jumping on the bandwagon and trying to pull their fake "working people 10-4 good buddy" street cred instead of the racist Nazi street cred.

If you want people to characterize something as a “protest” you’re going to need a lot more arson and looting. :)

I'm glad the governor is looking into this. Undoubtedly there are FL residents who contributed to this worthy cause via GFM, and then to have GFM suddenly say they're going to redirect the funds? Seems like some sort of fraud to offer a service for one thing and then change it after money has changed hands. GFM obviously realized this was a problem, so changed their minds and is providing automatic refunds. But this sort of fraud can only have a negative impact on the cause people were wanting to fund.

But GFM at the very least comes across as partisan, if not hypocritical. If they're going to be a partisan funder, then I'm sure there are other laws they need to comply with which they currently don't.

The plan presented to GFM by the organizers called for excess funds to be given to charities. How is it fraud for GFM to follow the organizer’s plan? The only thing they refused to do was fund the illegal occupation of downtown Ottawa.

To equate giving all of the funds to other charities and not allowing any of it to be used for its given purpose with giving the rest of the money after its intended purpose has been met is... well, not right.

Like, consider a non-profit that you want to support its vision. Most of the money goes to its mission, the rest pays its execs. They decide to use 100% of it for the execs. According to your argument, that's just fine.

I would think that every GFM campaign is approved by default once the money starts flowing in. To change it after the fact should be seen as a criminal act.

its a bit of dark pattern but i'm not sure if it is illegal. i suspect gofundme wanted the donations redirected so they would still receive the revenue the donations created. from their POV if they refund all the donations then they are paying fees for processing and refunding and not receiving any revenue. if gofundme wanted to still try and process the donations the more ethical option would be to set the default to be refund and allowed people to opt-in to have their donations redirected. also, my understanding is gofundme always planned to redirect funds to charities approved by the original organizers. i've seen some people claim that it was going to be charities approved of by gofundme alone but i have not seen evidence of this. i think in that case that would be deeply unethical.

"This is entirely outside of the mission of GoFundMe." https://twitter.com/gofundme/status/1278759152492220416

It is not if they agree with what is happening. They are fine with occupying if they back the cause.

Any and every corporation with more than a hundred employees is a money-generating sociopath. GoFundMe doesn't give a damn about anything at all, they just recognize it's profitable to back some causes and unprofitable to back others.

The thing is BLM protesters broke laws. They started fires, destroyed businesses, trapped drivers in tunnels, attacked police, set fires in people’s homes, and declared an autonomous zone that claimed to secede from the country - and this is just from my city. GoFundMe happily allowed them to be funded while Facebook and Twitter happily allowed them to organize. Driving trucks and using the roads as they are meant to be used does not seem anywhere nearly as egregious (I know some did more than this). It also seems appropriate given that bodily autonomy is the most fundamental civil liberty. If you don’t have control over your body, what do you have in terms of liberty and why does rule of law matter?

The vaccine isn’t being forced on anyone. Body autonomy is no more being violated here than any other time in history where vaccines have been required to do certain things, of which there are many examples.

Not to mention, all the things you listed at the start of your comment have been done by the Ottawa occupiers. I don’t like to call them truckers because most are not, and most truckers are against this occupation.

No vaccine = no work = no food = die

I'd call that "force" even if it's 2 degrees removed.

You do know that the vast majority of jobs in Canada do not require being vaccinated, right?

Did you know that vaccine requirements for certain jobs have existed for decades, and no one has lost their minds like this?

Do you think it’s possible that right wing politicians are purposely trying to cause outrage over something that has been a normal and accepted practise in order to further their political goals?

When was there a requirement in our history to be vaccinated to shop for your groceries?

There isn't one now.

It's called a career because you do it your whole life and you keep getting paid more money to do it. What are other job options for truckers? Fast food? Warehouse? It's not like you can just go get a SWE job.

Yes, but you agree to that mandate before getting the job. When you join the Army you know you're selling your body to the state.

Of course politicians are politicizing. But they're just riding the wave of something that people are already mad about--like higher taxes and abortion. Your comment makes it sound like people are mindless automatons whose opinions have no substance. They are opinions that differ from your own but that's OK. We need both sides of the discussion for a healthy democracy.

> It's called a career because you do it your whole life and you keep getting paid more money to do it.

People get fired all the time for a multitude of reasons. In fact, thanks to at will employment in the US, people get fired for no reason at all. I haven't seen mass protests about at will employment.

> What are other job options for truckers?

I would assume the same jobs available to anyone when they get fired.

> We need both sides of the discussion for a healthy democracy.

Agreed, but there is a problem when one side is not arguing in good faith. I would call occupying the nation's capital and assaulting people wearing masks not arguing in good faith.

>"You do know that the vast majority of jobs in Canada do not require being vaccinated, right?"

Well suddenly vast majority now does require COVID vaccination. It is forced even on people that never show up in the office. So if I were you I'd come up with some better arguments to advance the agenda.

> Well suddenly vast majority now does require COVID vaccination.

Except that's not true.

You're repeating this and providing zero information to back it up.

We started with almost no jobs needing proof of vaccination to a lot needing it. Each week more and more require it, you talk like this is a minor thing that will not escalate, when it clearly has been.

The options you seem to think unvaccinated Canadians have are slim and moving towards non, That is why people are protesting.

"no work = no food" sounds like the more productive link in the chain to break.

Good thing work that doesn't require vaccination is plentiful. Demand for labour is high everywhere.

Take it or get fired. That is being forced for all intents and purposes.

Shaq said it well: https://twitter.com/ginacarano/status/1489421001918083073

Really? They've attacked police and burned people's homes? Seceded? I've not been following the news much, but I haven't seen this.

They have attacked police. They have had dance parties on war memorials. They threw human shit at a home with a pride flag in the window. They assaulted people for wearing masks. Healthcare workers are now told to remove any indications that they work at a hospital for their own safety.

In other words, it's nothing alike.

You're right. It's worse. BLM was because black people were being unjustly murdered. This occupation is because grown men are scared of a safe and effective vaccine during a worldwide pandemic.

Would you please stop taking the thread further into flamewar? I understand that you're justifiably upset about it, but you've posted 29 (edit: now 35) comments in this thread alone, many of them repetitive, and at this point you're falling into swipes. That doesn't help persuade anyone and it certainly isn't the curious conversation we're hoping for here.

By the time we get to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30226076, followed by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30226101, followed by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30226189, the intended spirit of this site has been completely lost.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30226201

Edit: Since this request didn't work, I've rate limited your account. Lest that seem to be out of bias, I've also rate limited the other commenters who have been feeding the repetitive flamewar side of this thread. I also banned at least one of the worst offenders. If you don't want to be rate limited, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the site guidelines in the future.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, and certainly not flamewar tangents into deeper circles of hell.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yeah, that was a dumb comment. Sorry.

> Healthcare workers are now told to remove any indications that they work at a hospital for their own safety.

This seems like a really weird narrative. Why would people who are protesting vaccine mandates be against healthcare workers? They aren't the ones keeping the mandate in place. There's a tenuous connection with them being the ones to administer a vaccine if someone decides to get vaccinated but it's not like attacking a healthcare worker is going to accomplish anything. A lot of the people engaging in this protest have already been vaccinated, what's their beef with healthcare? Honestly, this just seems like spin that's aimed at creating two opposing groups.

From what I've seen it's just spin. They (the CBC et al) have taken the worst examples, real, imagined, or completely out of context, and acted like this is what the protest is all about.

The war memorial is a good example. This is something that's at the site of the protest because it's in downtown ottawa. Pretending it's being "disrespected" is some nonsense you could level at any group protesting downtown. In this case its particularly silly because the demographic that is protesting is overall very supportive or Canada's military, and is literally there protesting for freedom.

Yeah, I think post Trump 2016, CBC took a very activist-oriented approach which hemorrhaged their cultural trust. They got pushback and then dug in further. There’s no self reflection at all.

I haven’t seen any evidence of the Canadian truckers doing anything egregious or blatantly illega.

However here are example sources I just found from a few Google searches for what I saw from BLM protests in my city (the grandparent comment):

https://clashdaily.com/2020/11/seattle-blm-activist-arrested...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protes...

https://komonews.com/news/local/police-spokesperson-accuses-...

https://www.kitsapsun.com/story/news/2021/06/17/five-years-m...

https://www.the-sun.com/news/910187/security-guard-seattle-p...

https://nypost.com/2020/08/14/seattle-blm-protesters-demand-...

https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/ix9bwy/black_liv...

I know all about that. I was questioning the claim that this protest has done all the same things.

Sorry I thought your comment was in response to my earlier GP comment. I edited it to clarify. And yes I haven’t seen any of the same things with the Canada protests.

It is being forced. If you can experience significant losses or risks unless you comply, that’s being forced. You’re being disingenuous. It’s easy to see where this breaks down - per your logic a mobster running a protection racket isn’t forcing anyone to pay extortion money either.

It's not forced. There any many jobs that don't require a vaccine. It's a choice.

A protection racket is enforced through the use of physical violence. Terrible analogy.

And this is forced through other means that aren’t physical - but it is still forced. I am also not sure why the choice to get other jobs changes or justifies anything here. For example consider this: “There are other jobs so quit complaining when we racially discriminate against you.”

> And this is forced through other means that aren’t physical - but it is still forced.

No, it is not forced. It is a choice.

> For example consider this: “There are other jobs so quit complaining when we racially discriminate against you.”

Race is a protected class. Vaccination status is not unless you have a document medical reason.

Except it is, check the Nuremberg tribunal case.

Can you point me to the part of the Canadian Human Rights Act that defines vaccination status as a protected class?

By definition, this is forced. Force means to make someone do something against their will. In this case the choice is be fired or take the vaccine. They obviously don't want to be fired, so they are being forced to take the vaccine. Yes, it isn't physical force, but it is forced none the less.

> By definition, this is forced. Force means to make someone do something against their will.

Yes, but they aren't required to get the vaccine against their will. They have the choice to quit. That's what makes it a choice. If they had no choice to quit, then you would be correct.

> In this case the choice is be fired or take the vaccine.

Exactly.

> They obviously don't want to be fired, so they are being forced to take the vaccine.

Some choices are hard. That's life. As you wrote in the previous sentence, it is a choice.

> Yes, it isn't physical force, but it is forced none the less

No more forced than any other condition of employment.

"You will give me what I want, or you will choose to relinquish your livelihood" does not sound like a choice, but an ultimatum.

Heads: I win, Tails: you lose is not good faith in the slightest, or even a reasonable facsimile of a choice.

Speaking of good faith arguments; as you know they can still be truckers. Just not international truckers.

There are tons of domestic trucking jobs.

And they can’t be international truckers anyways because the US won’t let them in without a vaccine.

I'm your boss, either have sex with me or be fired.

You aren't forced, there are a lot of other jobs that don't require you to have sex with the boss.

You ok with this? Don't have an abortion or you will be fired. Don't have a kid or you will be fired. It is always a choice right?

In Canada, all of what you just described is illegal.

That is the point. 'Have a vaccine or be fired' is the same.

Sure, it isn't 'forced' as in, we will tie you up and someone will give you the vaccine, (same as have sex with me or be fired, technically I won't force myself on you) but basically amounts to the same. And taking in account that a) there are vaccine side effects (I had them and know a few others that also did) b) they don't really help with the spread, just reducing the symptoms, it shouldn't be the business deciding on it.

Please omit personal swipes from your comments here. This flamewar is bad enough already.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

My mistake. You’re right I could’ve made that comment without the personal swipe.

Accepting your premise that it's being forced on us, how is this different from the many other laws we are "forced" to obey as a part of Canadian society?

Consent of the governed, quite obviously.

Majority consent[0], which is what we have in the case of the vaccine.

[0] except for protected classes, there are specific carve outs for that.

Please show us sources of businesses being burned, looted, people assaulted and vehicles destroyed by Canadian truckers.

Do you have evidence of destruction caused by the protesters? I am interested in seeing it. All video I have seen is completely peaceful.

But they didn't tho. The people that did that were criminals taking advantage of the situation and lack of police. BLM protestors where nonviolent except when police tried to push them back and silence them. Sure they took over areas, but that's what happens during social movements. The damage was greatly exaggerated unrealistically by right wing news media.

So the same as this protest? The violence is by criminals taking advantage of the situation. They are nonviolent except when the police try and push them back.

I’m going to guess you don’t think that because you don’t like the goals behind this protest?

When I watched the live streams on twitch, I remember one video where the police were just standing there doing nothing, the protesters were yelling abuse. The police just stood there. It wasn’t until the protesters started throwing bottles and setting a car on fire that the police got involved.

There were videos live streamed by people in the groups who were smashing the windows of the power company, going inside and destroying everything.

I don’t believe anything was greatly exaggerated or unrealistic when this was live streamed by people doing it.

Most of the protests were peaceful. But there was a lot of damage and a lot of violence not started by the police.

(I’m not American and don’t live in America, but I watched too many hours of the live streams while it happened)

Edit: twitch had streams of people streaming multiple streams. So 1 twitch stream was showing about 15 live streams happening at the time.

I'm afraid that's not what happened in reality in Seattle. You repeated the allegations multiple times but repeating them doesn't make it true. There were criminals who came to that area, but the BLM themselves did not seem interested in that stuff. And I was upset at the leaving of the area by the police, but the multiple admitted fake pics on fox news didn't show reality.

And now we know from the emails and discussions of the police and the mayor that they kind of left the police precinct with an expectation of the chaz that the precinct was going to be burned down after thet left by the crowd and they were almost disappointed . In Seattle we're currently in this weird situation where the police are basically in an almost complete work stoppage, and there's endless court battles about the cops who went to Jan 6, cops don't enforce Laws around property crimes. I don't see any future for the existing police force in Seattle. They just need to be fired and replaced en mass. But it will take years to eject them.

This is probably too much about Seattle but when trying to understand what's happening in Canada one has to be careful of the American press that lies about what's happening. My own dad believes that Seattle is burning basically.

People supporting BLM have a real issue to defend, and 400 years of precedence.

It's not the same; it's not even close.

No bad methods, only bad targets/ideologies?

Remember when GoFundMe was actually encouraging people to donate on Twitter to CHAZ/CHOP in Seattle? During a pandemic when most states still had mask mandates?

I do, and GoFundMe is a bunch of partisan hypocrites. Let me quote Elon: Professional Thieves.

It wasn’t just during a pandemic. It was literally the week after the stay at home lockdown order for WA state expired. It was the start of the various “phases” of restrictions following the hard lockdown order, including in King County where CHAZ took place. And of course the phases got paused because of a sharp increase in cases that June - the primary month in which CHAZ, other riots, and peaceful protests took place (while virtually everything else was shut down).

"... exactly the same group of people lamenting the paying of bail for BLM protesters are falling in line with rights for this trucker group ..."

That seems to be a gross over-generalization.

"Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt." - Pierre Trudeau, 1969

When trying to grasp the Canadian point of view on GoFundMe, understanding the primal fear this quote invokes in us is vital.

A missing piece of this is Canada's Bill C51 [1], which characterizes interference with critical infrastructure as terrorism. A significant difference between CHAZ/CHOP and these protests is the legal context. Looters bad, rah rah, but GoFundMe doesn't want to touch (legally-defined-as) terrorists with a 10 foot pole. But C51 was passed with an eye towards stopping anti-pipeline protests, and conservative Canadians loved that*. But now, they want the right to interfere with critical infrastructure as a legitimate form of protest. Should have thought of that in 2015, I guess.

[1] https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/Resear...

* though, it's worth pointing out that Trudeau was against it until he got elected, and it passed under his reign

This is a good point and if this law were enforced fairly and equally across all political causes, I would support it. Infrastructure is not, in my view, appropriate for political persuasion. It feels coercive in the same way ironically, that vaccine mandates are. However, I worry that often times these laws are enforced by whoever is in power in a one-sided manner. This was definitely the case in Seattle - we had a socialist city council member who helped BLM protesters break into city hall (a sort of manufactured protest event) but any hint of moderate or conservative protest and you can expect to be held to the letter of the law.

No, you don't seem to get it. This is happening in Canada. The laws here are different from Seattle. The question of how this law is enforced has zero application to the BLM protests stateside. GoFundMe has made the choice to operate in Canada, and they're going to make inconsistent-looking decisions because the laws simply aren't the same on both sides of the border.

Hmm - I might be missing something, but I think we are in agreement? I was just making a point that laws need equal enforcement to be just, regardless of jurisdiction. The Seattle mention was just to provide an example of a law being unequally enforced. I also agree that GFM may make different decisions for different locations to comply with the local laws, and also agree that protests should not displace the use of infrastructure like roads.

No. Arson, attacking police and forcefully occupying a public space are all illegal in Seattle too. Pretty sure arson is a felony. Someone was murdered in CHAZ.

Your theory doesn’t check out.

Are those acts defined as terrorism in that jurisdiction?

Does it matter?

I’d assume the penalty for funding felony arson and murder aren’t that different from funding terrorism.

Unless you're specifically paying someone to engage in arson and murder, which isn't the case, it's not illegal. Funding terrorists is illegal in a way that funding someone who happens to be a felon isn't.

I desperately wish that were true, but alas, that has not been been the case for several decades. It's cool to indefinitely detain and torture suspected terrorists, haven't you heard? Folks didn't care when it was just Muslims, but we all lost our rights to the war on terror.

Bill C-51 was written to enable the government to silence dissent. That's a right we all need. But it was passed at the height of the Idle No More protests, which many of the truckers out there would be vehemently opposed to. Politicians gain power when they can use fear and hate to fuel divisions and justify the erosion of our rights.

In practice it's quite different. For example if you send money to a suspected terror group your bank will block the transaction and freeze the funds (that is, they don't even get you your money back), even in the absence of any crime.

They won't do this for regular criminals. Even if they know that a transaction is probably related to criminal activity, the bank will just file a report and complete the transaction. Except for terrorism financing and sanctions evasion, it is entirely the job of Law Enforcement to act on reports.

I wonder how partisan this anti-mandate resistance is. My gut tells me it enjoys a lot of support from conservatives but also a healthy amount of support from a lot of moderates and a huge swath of the working class regardless of party affiliation.

Anti mandate movements in general have something closer to what you said, but everyone I know that isn't right wing is embarrassed or angry at the convoy, even those who don't like mandates.

That’s interesting. I feel like most of my normie acquaintances don’t really know what’s going on much less have strong feelings. In general I get a sense of disillusionment among my normie/nonpartisan friends with respect to the CDC guidance, vaccine mandates, etc.

It's creeping in here, but it just doesn't translate at all to sympathy to the convoy.

You could go live in a concentration camp and get forced experimental treatments, philosophically and metaphorically speaking. Respectfully.

I suggest everyone listen to the darkhorse podcast with Weinstein, Malone, and Kirsch. Kirsch did more than just invent the laser mouse.

I don't really see how that is related to my comment.

What other option is there when the government is tone deaf? They do it in France for other things and it's quite legal when there's a union behind it.

And what will the government do if the truckers finally throw in the towel like they did in the UK (or maybe it was Polish and other Eastern European truckers who chose to operate on the mainland after Brexit)?

That's not what happened in the UK. There was demand for a lot of truck drivers, in the past there were a lot of immigrants who would work for low wages, but they brilliantly cut off those workers, suddenly they were not enough truck drivers. There hasn't really been this big "I am anti-vax mandate and I'm not working thing" that some people are fantasizing about.

I never said anything about mandates in the UK, probably because there weren't any. But they did cut off the truck drivers in a different way and it's not the only labour shortage they'll experience due to brexit. This is how governments create artificial labour shortages.

I worked in logistics and I can tell you that the vast majority of truckers are vaccinated. I don't think they will throw in the towel. I don't see what happened to the UK happen in Canada.

Every truck union and federation has denounced the protests. Despite the protests, everything is operating logistically completely normally.

It isn't "truckers". Some participants brought trucks because they a) have sleeping facilities, b) have big loud horns, c) take a lot of space and are hard to remove. That doesn't make it a trucker protest anymore than someone riding a bicycle there would make it a bicycle protest.

How many people that aren't truckers just happen to have that kind of truck laying around for the occasional protest? Are you aware of the cost of a truck like that?

I didn't say these people don't have trucks or employment driving trucks. Clearly they do. But that the misrepresentation that they represent truckers, instead of just being some small subsection that have trucks, is misleading.

Again, all logistics are happening like normal through this whole event. Cross border traffic (despite vaccine mandates on both sides) at normal levels. National traffic at normal levels.

You can take virtually any field and find some subsection with these sorts of "beliefs". Coders against mandates. If someone smeared all coders because some subsection of HN stood honking horns at parliament, wouldn't that embarrass you?

OK, I see what you're saying now. On first read it sounded like you were saying they aren't truckers, but you're actually saying they don't represent all truckers.

In reality they represent at least as many truckers as are present (and who knows how many that aren't: what a union's PR department says and what its members think aren't necessarily the same thing), and presumably a large chunk of the people out there cheering them on.

If someone smeared all of a group of people for something that some individuals in that group did, I'd probably assume that their takes on things aren't very useful. I'd be frustrated to the extent that their pontificating affected my life negatively. I wouldn't be embarrassed.

Unions are in bed with the government.

How accurate of a gauge do you think your liberal friends are? I am not as liberal as all of my coworkers seem to be, but implying otherwise would make me feel less certain about keeping my job. Any chance your friends are just conforming to what they assume you think in order to maintain social status or your friendship?

My friends aren't only liberal, and most of them aren't from work. I worked for a fair bit in logistics and still have contact with that field, which leans much more to the right, and I haven't heard any support so far.

"Any chance your friends are just conforming"

In another post you claimed "seems to be siding with the government because the intent of the protest has been declared wrong-think by the PM"

Do you really think this? Do you really just caricaturize people who think differently from you in some easy "but they don't really think that" bin? In another you declared it "boomers".

Most of Canada is strongly over mandates. I'm over mandates, and many public agencies have made clear that things are going back to normal. Omicron changed everything. But we don't identify with an *ignorant* group primarily funded by and cheered on by Americans. It is, at its essence, almost traitorous.

And again let me say that I lean conservative. BLM protests that get out of hand? SEND IN THE POLICE. Rail blockades that go on for days? SEND IN THE POLICE. If I were in Seattle, the whole CHAZ/CHOP thing would be completely unacceptable. Amazingly I am also fully and completely against some of the most profoundly ignorant people this country hosts, financed by foreigners, terrorizing a city 24/7 (and yes, while you have "seen on Twitter" that the honking stops at 10 -- 105db incessant honking -- it actually happens throughout the day, along with fireworks and loud music), and the only victims are the citizens of Ottawa and Canada.

Maybe everyone who thinks differently from you is just a boomer conforming and eagerly consuming what the PM declares "wrong-think". Or maybe your perspective of the world is completely broken.

Given that parents getting into a shouting match with a particularly dense school board functionary is defined as "terrorism" now I think this can only lead to the terrorism accusation losing its sting. If every petty political squabble is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism.

A shouting matches at a school board in the US at least is not terrorism. Bringing your guns and saying you might use them in the future and making vaguely threatening comments about that sounds like something that should be illegal to me. Saying I hate this decision that you're making and I'm going to vote against you, not terrorism.

In which law can I find such behavior defined as terrorism? Because there's a big difference between a law on the books and a politician spouting off.

The law is vague enough so that if FBI wants, it can declare a real lot of things to be domestic terrorism. The official definition is "dangerous criminal acts intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or to influence or affect government policy or conduct within the jurisdiction of the United States".

Now, what is "dangerous"? There's no objective standard to it. Some people say publicly disagreeing with the government is "dangerous" for our democracy. A lot of people thinking Twitter and Facebook not banning everybody to the right of Nanci Pelosi is "dangerous". Other people say using wrong pronouns is "dangerous". Yet other say disagreeing with CRT is "dangerous". It all depends on how the law enforcement would define it.

Next is "influence or affect government policy". If you protest the government, you obviously want to influence its policy, right? Otherwise, what's the point of it? So, as long as FBI is willing to consider you "dangerous" - and again, there's no objective definition of it, and they will suffer absolutely zero consequences if they're wrong or overzealous in it - they have lawful authority to treat you as a terrorist.

Of course, there's a serious step to overcome - "criminal act". Only the court can decide if an act is "criminal". But for the FBI is would be impossible to enforce the law if they had to wait for a court conviction to do anything - so obviously, they are given a lot of leeway in persecuting acts that they think are "criminal" - and as long as they can prove there's not a law that explicitly says what you were doing is not criminal and FBI is explicitly forbidden from prosecuting you - even if you ultimately prove your innocence they suffer zero consequences. It's called "qualified immunity", look it up. And when we're talking about "terrorism", they could do a real lot of damage to you without ever taking matters to court. The process is often the punishment, and they can ruin your life very thoroughly way before you ever see the inside of a courtroom. And we know for a fact they are willing to lie in court documents - including outright fakery - to achieve their goals. You personally probably wouldn't be big enough fish for them to need to do that - but if they need to, they will.

That's a very loquatious way to say that no, shouting at a school board meeting is not legally defined as terrorism.

And, you're awfully fixated on American policy on this story about a situation going down in Canada. We are not the 51st state.

No, that's not what I said. What I said is, if FBI wants it, it can be treated by them as terrorism, and to prove them wrong would take a lot of effort. And there's no way neither to prevent them from it, nor to punish them for getting it wrong.

And if you think matters are different in Canada with respect to how law enforcement works, or how "anti-terrorist law" works - you'll soon learn Canadian law enforcement can make one's life hell the same way FBI can.

> And it's interesting how exactly the same group of people lamenting the paying of bail for BLM protesters are falling in line with rights for this trucker group to harass and occupy Canadian cities.

The inverse is also true, and at least in the more recent case people can point to the earlier BLM precedent. I.e., “if the platform can be used to fund BLM protests, then it can be used to fund trucker protests”. If GoFundMe didn’t want their platform to be used for this kind of thing, they should be mindful of the precedents they set.

I thought the real issue was that GoFundMe didn't initially return the money to the donors, instead they gave the money away to a charity, or so they claim.

They never did that.

They didn't do that, but they released a statement that they were going to do that, until there was a massive outcry and several state attorney generals got involved and promised to open investigations.

>And it's interesting how exactly the same group of people lamenting the paying of bail for BLM protesters are falling in line with rights for this trucker group to harass and occupy Canadian cities.

That's true, and its also interesting how exactly the same people who support the paying of bail for BLM looters and rioters (lawful protesters aren't arrested and don't need bail) are cheering the decision of GoFundMe to block the funds to the Canadian protesters. The issue as I see it is the failure of GoFundMe to have a consistent standard that is neutrally applied without regard to the underlying politics of those raising funds. If they say that its prohibited to raise funds for those involved in breaking the law, then that standard should be applied to both BLM and the truckers.

Another important issue in this case was the initial decision of GoFundMe to keep all donated funds absent a proactive request for a refund by those who had donated. Its bad enough if GoFundMe decided to act in a nakedly partisan manner when deciding who is allowed to raise funds on their platform, but its entirely another matter for them to make people jump through hoops to get their money back. I'm glad to see GoFundMe reversed this decision and decided to offer automatic refunds, but it shouldn't have taken a huge outcry for them to reach this decision.

> lawful protesters aren't arrested and don't need bail

That's only true if the police are perfect, which is very much not the case.

Apparently Elon Musk also got involved and called GoFundMe “professional thieves”, because they were going to redirect donations intended for Canadian protesters to other (likely left leaning) causes: https://nypost.com/2022/02/05/elon-musk-gofundme-professiona...

He also called out their double standard for claiming to not support protests that aren’t peaceful after they funded so many violent riots and illegal actions like CHAZ back in 2020.

Why does anyone care what Elon Musk says about this situation? It has nothing to do with his businesses.

I would bet a lot of money that the logistics aspect of it is what he's concerned with. Parts from suppliers don't magically show up at Tesla assembly lines.

Allegedly he donated as well, so it has to do with his money.

People can have opinions outside of their jobs and donate money too.

It probably has nothing do with you or my businesses, yet here we are talking about it.

Go fund me deserves all the flak they receive.

Redirecting donations intended for one cause to causes of their choosing is fraudulent.

If they have an issue with a cause, which should be stipulated in their ToCs up front and not subject to inflight changes, then refund all donors to the best of their ability.

That is not what is happening though. The article says, all the money is refunded to all the donors.

Only after they faced a heavy backlash:

"...on Friday, saying it violated its terms of service. At the time it said donors would have two weeks to request a refund, with any remaining funds distributed to “credible and established charities.”"

"I'm not shoplifting, I put the things back after you caught me."

They should be prosecuted for conspiring to steal funds and use for non intended purpose. Trying to mascarade it fools no one.

Before GFM decided to directly refund everyone, their plan was to redirect any non-refunded funds to charities of the choosing of the organizers of the GFM. The only way they would go to left-leaning charities would have been if the organizers of the GFM were left-leaning and chose that

The charities were going to be selected by the convoy but "approved" by GFM. Obviously there's no public list of charities GFM has "approved" in the past but it goes without saying that only left-leaning charities make the list.

It's surely only a matter of time before he calls someone a "pedo guy".

When he sees something getting attention he can't seem to help inserting himself into it.

> they were going to redirect donations intended for Canadian protesters to other (likely left leaning) causes

Per the article you linked, donors have two weeks to request a refund, and any remaining funds will be redirected to causes chosen by the Freedom Convoy organizers:

> Donors have until Feb. 19 to ask for a refund, and the rest of the money the group raised would be allocated to “credible and established charities” chosen by Freedom Convoy organizers, the site said.

A few things regarding this:

* They already reversed that policy and plan to do direct refunds.

* This policy itself was new and a departure from past practices, likely due to the legal troubles it would create for them.

This narrative is bullshit. GFM was gonna redirect the funds to charities chosen by the main organization behind the GFM

This is just a rightwing talking point

If you send money to fascists be prepared for the money to be intercepted. Simple as that

As much as you may dislike "fascists", you don't get to tell other people who they can or cannot send money to.

Other people sent money to GoFundMe. GoFundMe now has it, and as you said yourself, you don't get to tell them who they can or cannot send it to.

If I accept money on behalf of someone else, with the expectation that the cash will be given to that person and I just use the money as I please, this is called fraud.

If I set up a monetary relationship between 2 entities and then I interfere with that relationship, this is called tortuous interference with contracts.

GoFundMe tells a lot of people who they can or cannot send money to via their platform. First, there are laws around sending money to designated terrorist organizations, then there are restrictions around violence, pornography and sex work, and many more. The giant list can be found here: https://www.gofundme.com/c/terms

If you want to mail a check to these truckers, have at it, but GoFundMe is not obligated to collect money on their behalf. Here's another example, but not one Ron Desantis would ever care about - https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200131-gofundme-shuts-us...

They can't collect the money under false pretense and redistribute as they please. That's clear fraud.

They weren't obligated to continue to collect money on their behalf, but once they started collecting that money, they are obligated to handle it responsibly. They do not get to decide to withhold money unilaterally and give it to other charities (as GoFundMe has stated they intend to do).

A telephone company can't decide to give me a phone number then tell me who I can or cannot call. My ISP cannot tell me which websites I can or cannot access (without a court order). If GoFundMe allowed the convoy to open a charity drive, they cannot unilaterally close it and confiscate the money.

The people opposed to government-enforced medical mandates are fascists?

The wordhas truly lost all meaning. Though according to Orwell, it already had even before the end of WW2

Really, how did the media convinced masses that people fighting for all's freedom are fascists?

“All’s” — im sorry but if 50%+1 people will disagree with the cause, your so-called freedom fighters are not fighting for everyone

The "all" in the gp refers to the fought for freedom(s) applying to everyone, not that it has majority support or that is wanted by everyone.

Fascist according to what definition? I think you are deeply confused.

You are the part of the reason that modern extremism exists in the first place.

Please do not take HN threads further into hellish ideological flamewar. We want curious conversation here.

Also, please keep personal attacks off this site. Not ok here.

Edit: you've been posting so many personal attacks and breaking the site guidelines so repeatedly that I've banned the account. That is seriously not cool here.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Please do not take HN threads further into hellish ideological flamewar. We want curious conversation here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Is this essentially going to be an investigation in which they find that which has made people butthurt is something they signed away in the terms & conditions they never read? Seems like it. Good on GoFundMe.

Who reads t&c? Gofundme exists because people fund campaigns they want to. They can point to their T&C and say hard luck. But they won't exist for long with that response. Existence of any business is not a law of nature. If they mess with their user base, they will cease to exist.

If you put in big letters "Contribute to <this>" and then, somewhere totally else, in tiny letters amid 15,000 other tiny letters, put "but we may take your money and contribute it to anything we like"... then you are NOT the good guy. You are swindling the user and a lot of people are of the opinion that this is exactly the kind of situation the government should step in on.

Alternatively, make the 15,000 tiny letters illegal, and require products to specify in clear, easily understandable language what the user is agreeing to; with the ability to return whatever it is if they do not agree with it.

Terms and conditions aren't bulletproof. Contrary to popular belief (among socialists in particular for some reason), corporations cannot do whatever they want. If something is illegal, no amount of fine print can make it not illegal.

GoFundMe has already backed away from this new policy and will refund directly, so it's honestly probably moot at this point.

But this idea of donating to other charities unless a refund is requested appears to be something novel. As far as I can tell, it's something they came up with, then backed away from, just for this incident specifically.

The blatant misinformation is this thread is astounding.

If you think this is “just a protest”, you don’t live in Ottawa and have no clue what’s going on

If you think vaccines are being forced on anyone, you have no clue what’s going on in Canada.

If you think GFM planned to “steal” the money, you clearly have no clue that the organizer’s plan called for excess funds to be given to charities.

The comments in this thread read like a typical unhinged Fox News comment section. To see this crap on HN is so disappointing.

Define “forced.” Your answer will speak volumes.

Your comment already spoke volumes. Remember when conservatives used to talk about choices having consequences? Funny how they they don’t seem to like that concept when it’s inconvenient for them.

Choices do have consequences, but that does not mean those consequences are just, or that someone can just say those are the consequences take-it-or-suffer.

Like I said, we've had vaccine and testing requirements for many jobs for decades. No one lost their mind. You are being manipulated by right wing politicians.

What we did in the past does not negate the right for anyone to be skeptical about future inventions and developments.

Also, it is very presumptive of you to believe that I must listen to or am swayed by politicians to hold such beliefs.

Okay, you’ve defined forced elsewhere:

“That is not being forced. That is called choice. Choices have consequences.”

That’s literally forced but in an nonviolent matter. Kind of like how people can be correctly be called “forced” to file tax returns in the US.

They are forced, stop playing word games.

"Libertarians forced to use public highways. Oh the humanity"

I'm not familiar with the US tax laws, but in Canada if you don't file a tax return and don't owe money, there are no consequences. If you owe money, and do not pay, eventually you will end up in jail. That's actually being forced, and makes this a terrible analogy.

If someone is fired from the military for not getting a non-covid vaccine, are they being forced to get the vaccine?

They are not being forced. Stop playing word games.

Please omit flamewar swipes from your comments here.

Your comment would be fine without the last sentence.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

In the US, everyone must file a tax return if they have anything over $12,000+ in income. If you don’t, you could get arrested. That is rightfully called forced, because the threat is that you will lose your livelihood if you don’t file. Nobody would call living in jail a real choice.

Similarly, if you don’t take the vaccine, you are also losing your livelihood in the military, possibly having no way to provide for your family outside the military, and this can be rightfully called forced.

As I understand it, the convoy was sparked by a decree that truckers crossing the US/Canada border would have to either be vaccinated or go into 14 days of quarantine. The latter would effectively take away the livelihood of anyone whose job involved doing that frequently. I don't think it's very useful to argue that taking away someone's livelihood isn't "force", or to argue that people are just "choosing" to lose their livelihood. Sure it's not physical force but it's a pretty extreme level of coercion, and it's perfectly easy to understand both why people in that position would turn to their democratic right to protest, and also why a whole lot of vaccinated and pro-vaccine people would support them.

Your only taking away someone’s livelihood if being an unvaccinated trucker is their only option. The vast majority of jobs in Canada do not require a vaccine. Choices have consequences.

Mandatory school vaccinations, mandatory military vaccinations, mandatory drug testing in many jobs, etc. Why did no one lose their minds over those things?

This vaccine uses a different technology than all previous vaccines. It bears almost nothing in common technologically with previous vaccines.

As such extra skepticism is permissible.

This is just vaccine misinformation. Anti vaxxers will already have some excuse for why "this" vaccine is different.

This is scientific fact. mRNA is completely different in operation than older degraded-virus vaccines, and to say otherwise is misinformation.

The only things they have in common is the name and the end goal.

A year or more ago, sure, a bit of skepticism is fine.

At this point it's been well shown that it's safe and that being unvaccinated is much more dangerous.

Time to grow up.

It is not scientifically possible to show that any substance is completely safe after one year. Anyone who says otherwise is selling you something.

There are countless compounds (mercury, lead, smoking particles) which take years to show their harm and were once considered safe by science.

Do I think the vaccine will join those ranks? No, but I don’t want to oversell it’s safety either.

>Choices have consequences.

Yes, the powers that be chose to force an unnecessary vaccine on working class people, and this is the consequence.

Can we quit using this sinister thought-terminating cliche?

> Yes, the powers that be chose to force an unnecessary vaccine on working class people

No one was forced to get a vaccine. Period.

"Do X or you're fired" -- this is coercion by any reasonable definition. If you think it's easy to just "get another job", you are speaking from a position of immense economic privilege. It's tantamount to "let them eat cake".

Urbanites will regret their fickle treatment of the key workers who provide them with food and Amazon deliveries.

> "Do X or you're fired" -- this is coercion by any reasonable definition.

Do X or you're fired is literally the basis for all employment.

> If you think it's easy to just "get another job", you are speaking from a position of immense economic privilege. It's tantamount to "let them eat cake".

Demand for labour is immense right now. I'm sure you've noticed. People are fired all the time for a number of reasons.

> Urbanites will regret their fickle treatment of the key workers who provide them with food and Amazon deliveries.

They won't, because the vast majority of truckers are vaccinated, working, and against this occupation.

"Just learn to code bro" energy.

You do know there are many more jobs in Canada than coding, right?

Just for your information "bro":

Big Canadian company that does much software development has sent mail to their (never mind employees) but subcontracting companies - get vaccinated or you are out.

I think you've effectively conceded the point here. Losing one's job is generally understood to be a catastrophic outcome for people in our society, especially when someone has been doing that job for a long time (and perhaps also doesn't have the educational level to get another job at anything close to the same compensation). It follows that "do X or you're fired" is a form of force or coercion. In fact that's so obvious in general that to narrow the definition of "force" to exclude it seems to be a case of special pleading. Threatening someone with a severe material consequence and then saying "it's not force because it's your choice" isn't an argument most people are going to accept, and I find it interesting that you're resorting to it, because it's surely not the strongest argument for your position.

It is typical hypocritical government logic. That's what they say when fucking up one's life:

Gov: it is not a punishment.

Victim: But, but ...

Gov: Sorry but it is your problem / choice / insert your favorite hypocritical BS

> Losing one's job is generally understood to be a catastrophic outcome for people in our society, especially when someone has been doing that job for a long time (and perhaps also doesn't have the educational level to get another job at anything close to the same compensation)

I haven't seen any mass protests about at-will employment. Why not?

> It follows that "do X or you're fired" is a form of force or coercion.

But we've had these things around for decades. Vaccines have been required in other jobs, tests have been required for jobs, and yet no mass protests. Why not?

> Threatening someone with a severe material consequence and then saying "it's not force because it's your choice" isn't an argument most people are going to accept, and I find it interesting that you're resorting to it, because it's surely not the strongest argument for your position.

It actually is the strongest argument, because it's true. No one is being forced.

> I haven't seen any mass protests about at-will employment. Why not?

The cases are not comparable because if an at-will employee loses a job with one employer, the employee can often find a job with another employer.

> Vaccines have been required in other jobs, tests have been required for jobs, and yet no mass protests. Why not?

The cases are not comparable because, as far as I know, there is no testing option in the Canadian regulation. Also, as far as I know, there is no exception made to the 14-day quarantine period for those who cannot be vaccinated because of either a negative reaction to a prior vaccine or deeply held religious convictions.

> The cases are not comparable because if an at-will employee loses a job with one employer, the employee can often find a job with another employer.

And so can anyone fired for not begin vaccinated, since there are many more jobs that don't require a vaccine than those that do.

> The cases are not comparable because, as far as I know, there is no testing option in the Canadian regulation.

It depends which jobs we're talking about. Make so mistake, this "trucker" protest has been coopted by basically anyone mad about vaccines. So for instance Alberta healthcare workers do not have to get vaccinated, but are subject to periodic testing instead.

> And so can anyone fired for not begin vaccinated, since there are many more jobs that don't require a vaccine than those that do.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. The jobs I was referring to are Canadian cross-border trucking jobs, all of which are affected. Affected truckers may be able to transition to other trade routes, but they may face hardships (e.g., increased time away from family, lower pay, expenses for required additional training, or opportunity losses relating to non-use of expertise gained in cross-border work).

> If you think GFM planned to “steal” the money, you clearly have no clue that the organizer’s plan called for excess funds to be given to charities.

So Gofundme gets to turn all the funds into "excess" funds?

Per GFM's standard procedures, which the organizers agreed to when setting up the gofundme, when a gfm gets cancelled, donators have a certain amount of time to ask for refunds. The leftover money that wasn't refunded goes to charities of the choosing of the organizers of the gfm

You're surprised GFM refused to fund an occupation of the nation's capitol?

The charities were being selected by the organizers.

The irony of it all is that all this noise is just for American consumption.

Trudeau and the Liberals are loving the damage "The Honkening" causes to the Conservative brand. Erin O'Toole spent the last election trying to convince Canadians that the Conservative Party of Canada is civilized and not a tribe from Trumpistan.

That has all gone down the drain, the CPC kicked O'Toole out and the party is about to swallow the Trump bait, hook and line. Even populist conservatives like Doug Ford (Ontario's premier) can see this.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Party of Canada is just giggling and partying as quietly as they can contain themselves.

>"If you think vaccines are being forced on anyone, you have no clue what’s going on in Canada."

Yes vaccines are being forced - how else a threat to loose your job can be called. And yes I live in Canada.

>"you don’t live in Ottawa and have no clue what’s going on"

Do we have a clue about what's really going on in the rest of the world? We do not but it never stops people including HN crowd from judging. I bet you are guilty of that too.

> Yes vaccines are being forced - how else a threat to loose your job can be called. And yes I live in Canada.

I call that a choice. Parent's have a choice to vaccinate or homeschool. Military members have a choice to non-covid vaccine or not be a service member. No one was losing their minds over that.

There are many jobs available that don't require a vaccine.

> Do we have a clue about what's really going on in the rest of the world?

We can just listen to people who live in Ottawa. Among others, the mayor has been pretty clear what's going on.

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