The PC and Perpetually Offended Brigade

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

No Kevin, I'm saying that you are correctly criticizing the simple but false narrative created by the mainstream media, in which pro-COVID pass people are on the "left" whereas anti-COVID pass people are on the "right" or "far-right". Johnny Rotten, on the other hand, is just repeating and feeding into exactly the same simple but false narrative.

[Caomhaoin]

Cheers then, eh, Christopher : )

[Kunt 4 Life]

To be fair to Jonny Rotten, he did say back in the 70s that he wanted to kill Jimmy Saville and that he was a disgusting hipocrit so not everything out of his mouth was bad.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

But still just a mouth all the same! haha

[Mower Liberation Front]

Trudeau has just invoked the emergency act against peaceful protesters which is essentially martial law. This is the first time in Canadas history that this has happened and he has taken this drastic step while still have not having made one single attempt to meet with any of the protesters. Meanwhile during the BLM riots in 2020 he went out and took a knee with protesters and while he did this a group of people surrounded him and his security detail calling him racist.

The Liberal Government has also said they are going to broaden the scope of the anti money laundering and terrorism laws so that they cover crowd funding platforms. As far gone as I thought Canada was when l lived there this is just crazy Trudeau and his Government have to go or the country is gone. Fidel would be so proud.

Trudeau, when farmers block roads in Delhi: "They have to be allowed to protest, it's a part of democracy"

Trudeau, when truckers block roads in Ottawa: "REEEEE! TERRORISTS!"

[Caomhaoin]

To be fair to Jonny Rotten, he did say back in the 70s that he wanted to kill Jimmy Saville and that he was a disgusting hipocrit so not everything out of his mouth was bad.

He also said Nelson Mandela had a cult of personality around him and he was cleansed from a bomber to an omniscient father to the whole world, calling him a fake etc.

Even if there might be the kernel of a point, the cunt did spend seventeen years being booted around in prison without holding a great deal of ill will, and he is certainly a saint compared to the inept, resentful pricks who stepped into his boots since.

[Mooncat]

For all the folks talking bollocks about Canada, I'm here now and the protests are far from peaceful. They are actively harrassing people, breaking shop windows, forcing closures (local businesses online begging for calm because they are almost at the point of closing permanently), blocking routes from emergency vehicles and essential trade (this is what the emergency act mainly covers), assaulting people etc. Depends on your leanings of course whether you want to latch onto the faction of protesters that actually are peaceful, or the ones who are genuinely waving Swastikas in the city centres and causing a lot of trouble. Both sides are there. Referring to them overall as a peaceful protest though is simply untrue. And for the record, the majority of provincial premiers have been warning of increased sanctions and action against the truckers for a while now and the decision to invoke the Emergency Measures Act came out of a meeting of all the premiers and the government, it's not like Trudeau just pulled it out of his hole.

The fascination with Trudeau is really intriguing to me. He's an ok PM but nothing terrible, yet right-leaning people have latched on to him so hard like he's the anti-christ or something. It reminds me of the way left wingers have latched onto Jordan Peterson in the same kind of way. Both of them are actually quite moderate, but hysterical people who have lost the plot seem to be using them as the lightning rods for this whole culture war...

[Caomhaoin]

The Emergency Act doesn't 'mainly cover' blocking emergency vehicles etc, it goes much further than that. This information is not only freely available but widely reported.

I acknowledge that you are there and have your ear to the ground far more than I or anybody else here does, but the response, at least as far as it's being reported is draconian. Seizure of bank accounts etc? His back is against the wall but even federal premiers are warning of 'throwing oil on the fire' by essentially making protesters non-persons if they don't cease and desist.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Both surely are present among the protesters. But having just today done a check, neither The Guardian, nor the New York Times, nor CNN even mention Sikh drivers, while a Tribune of India piece describes them as "the majority" (numbers wise) of truckers present. Tribune of India might be exaggerating, but the fact that their presence is not being mentioned at all by the liberal media is precisely the kind of thing that feeds into people just not trusting one or the other sides, and that's where polarization comes in. I'm not right-leaning at all, but to my eyes Trudeau is up there with Macron (I live in France) as the worst liberal leaders in the world today: hypocritical regarding all "left" talking points. And given the excesses of Canada's response to COVID, it is no surprise that this current thing is happening there and not somewhere else.

[Mooncat]

Yes the Emergency Act does cover more, but the intention is to use it specifically to clear essential routes for trade and also emergency vehicles. It's also a temporary measure. I would call the response so far far from Draconian. If anything, the response has been incredibly muted in terms of official sanctions. Especially compared to the treatment indigenous people receive whenever they protest. If it gets Draconian at some point that might be another matter, but for now they've only just finally started to take the appropriate measures to remove the worst elements of the truckers who are causing the most harm.

And Chris, I don't really disagree with you (albeit I still think you're a little overly hard on Trudeau, despite containing some truth), but this is the post-Trump political world we live in I suppose. Love him or hate him, he deliberately fueled divisiveness as a political tactic and now it's not enough to be centre-ish, nuanced, or reasonable. People have just picked sides and are screaming into the abyss at each other and I have no idea how that ends.

For the record, Trudeau was elected because Canada had been under a conservative government for years and it was awful (as conservative governments often are), so he was elected as the best candidate/party who isn't conservative. That's where Canada still is right now and why he has been elected 3 times, he's still the best candidate because nobody wants to go back to conservative leadership. Which is fair (in my opinion of course).

[Caomhaoin]

I dunno lad, stealing (or appropriating depending on your point of view) fuel, freezing bank accounts, forcing insurance policy cancellations? That's all on the table, so if draconian feels a little like medieval terminology, it's startlingly harsh. Are the french any better bashing and tear gassing? Maybe not, but I'd rather a few slaps than having my ability to function in society taken away.

As for Trudeau, as has been pointed out, he's a demonstrable hypocrite (granted he's a politician, goes with the territory) but more pertinently, his refusal to even meet representatives of the protests are evidence enough of his intolerance of dissent.

I'll grant you, I find him an odious, obnoxious flip flopper and that colours my view of the situation, but not so much that I can't see the wood from the trees. Forcing people to take vaccinations is tyranny, a minor form of tyranny, it's not Stalinist Russia, but fuck him, he's made his bed.

Top post from BSC. Like a crescent moon over a village in Castilla La Mancha on a sultry late spring evening. Rare enough, but sumptuous

[Snare]

For all the folks talking bollocks about Canada, I'm here now and the protests are far from peaceful.

Ha, I've been trying to figure out why so many here are up in arms about personalities and events in Canada. I never knew there were so many Canadaians here... At least you're there and seeing things for yourself, which supports what shop owners and residents have been reporting in various news interviews but denied by people here for some reason.

Your observations beats any of the hissy fits here from the usual sort getting overly-excited about preceived slights to their very existence. It seems some people here are ready to attack the Canadian Embassy - calm down like!

[Mooncat]

In fairness, so far they've only been threatening those measures. The overwhelming message for weeks from the premiers and Trudeau has always been, 'please stop, you're causing a huge amount of harm with your illegal activity'. They're actively trying to give the illegal protesters every chance to revert to non-illegal protest before being forced to take action. The license suspension threats are because they're specifically using their trucks for illegal means rather than what they're actually meant for. If they were just protesting themselves without the trucks this wouldn't be a threat. The bank accounts are because they're raising millions to keep this activity going. If they weren't engaging in illegal activity this would all look different, but they are and are causing significant harm to the people and businesses who live there. Remember this is an era where people actually stormed the American Capitol, and this kind of rhetoric comes from a lot of the truckers. They've been seizing guns and body armour from some of these people (Canada has its fair share of redneck, gun nut militia people too). It's no wonder there's heightened sensitivity about this kind of stuff right now. I can genuinely see how setting a precedent for such measures could be alarming, but until they actually start abusing it in some way it's all hypothetical.

I can also see why he won't meet with protestors. Premier Jason Kenney tried that and acquiesced to their demands to remove Covid restrictions (passport, masking in 2 weeks etc) and then they immediately changed their demands to be that they now wouldn't move their blockade until Trudeau was removed from office. These people (the specific harmful element) aren't here to be reasonable or negotiate, this is essentially just the natural combustion point for people who are sick of mandates and are acting out. It started as a specific trucker thing, but has expanded well beyond that now.

And despite his flaws, Trudeau is still a progressive leader in an era of huge resurgence in right-wing politics and viewpoints. With politics it's usually a case of choosing your lesser evil, right?

[Caomhaoin]

Fine points well made, but the lesser of the two evils is in the eye of the beholder and we certainly differ in that regard.

Notwithstanding, quite a bit of what you've written is food for thought, even though I'm out on the right wing blitzing left backs like Lee Sharpe in his heyday: )

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Aye, all you're saying is fair enough. But liberal Canada was really allowed run riot over the last two years. Every liberal Canadian colleague (all academics) I'm connected with on Twitter I ended up, one by one, masking, the levels of their insane COVID panic were so high. And I'm saying that only with respect to the fact that Canada is still 90th or lower in the world in terms of mortality per million. But even with that, the liberal camp kept demanding more restrictions, and kept on getting listened to. Kids not being allowed talk to each other during lunch, if I hadn't heard that one directly from a close friend now living there with kids, I'd have thought it was KC pulling something off Telegram. That atmosphere for two years would drive *me* crazy, so you can only imagine what it would do to the heads of people who thought we were already at overkill with the first lockdown. Panic has been allowed to call the shots in Canada and that, in turn, has dictated to everyone that they not live how they wish to live, down to dictating how their children can and cannot play. Don't know if you have kids, but I'd have snapped at that too.