That's like saying civil forfeiture is ok because the police will only ever take things from people involved with actual crimes, and that if you're not doing crime you have nothing to worry about. Do you forget how things are manipulated by people with power?
> The top donation, $215,000, has a comment that says “processed but not recorded.” The next top donation, at $90,000, is listed as from Thomas M. Siebel. CTV News has reached out to the American billionaire by the same name but has not confirmed it is his donation.
> The inquiry launched by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s government into the scale of foreign funds aimed at damaging the province’s oil and gas industry has issued its long-awaited report, finding that foreign donors provided nearly $1.3 billion in funds for Canadian environmental campaigns between 2003 and 2019.
Why is it wrong? When Indian farmers started theirs money poured in from all over the world. When Nigerians started theirs same thing happened. Why should Canada be different?
BLM protesters have been promptly arrested when they blocked streets or failed to disperse when the police ordered it, often rather violently. If these protesters want to get the same treatment BLM protesters got, they may well regret it.
In Portland Oregon, BLM spray painted buildings, burnt many things in the middle of the road and sidewalks, destroyed property, physically assaulted, broke windows, and ripped down bus stops and statues. They formulated an incursion into a state building putting the lives of Oregon's law officers in jeopardy (Molotov cocktails throw at them).
Depending on your persuasion, you might argue some justification occurred in Minneapolis Minnesota. But there are clearly limits when destruction of property and looting fall far outside of any tenuous reflection of social unrest. (Target?)
Seattle Washington was worse. Much much worse. The city directed their police force to yield a central block of the city to armed rebellion. People, one as I recall completely innocent, were shot and killed.
There was not the immediacy nor the widespread arrests to match the level of violence and destruction in these three locations. In terms of accuracy and spirit I believe you have missed the mark in your description of action and response.
There have been some good points in this thread otherwise and I'm still thinking about them. But you would be better served by re-evaluating your position on this topic.
Mid-level police commanders unilaterally decided to abandon the precinct, which allowed CHAZ to form. Not “the city,” and not in the face of “armed rebellion.”
(Yes, there were guns and unfortunate violence later: after the police left. Their job is maintaining public order; they failed.)
The police job in the history of modern republics was never to maintain "public order", unless by that you mean preventing disruption of existing systems of privilege. I can only recommend reading Michel Foucault "Discipline and Punish" about the society of control, and the roles of the police and judicial system.
Hello, that's a good point! We should always point out pedophilia where it's hiding. However, from previous readings and from following the linked sources of that Wikipedia article, i don't think that Foucault was a pedophile. He did (like many other thinkers of the time) sign a petition defending someone who didn't deserve it, but it's easy to judge in retrospect as the precise context of the case was not publicly known at the time of the petition. But nowhere could i read him arguing for pedophilia or suggesting he himself engaged in such abhorrent behavior.
Thank you gammarator, you are correct, that is how it initiated. I believe what I'm recalling, and I apologize for not remembering specifics as clearly, was a couple different events after CHAZ was...let's say "established". I believe there was more than one armed stand off, one in particular a organized force (but was it national guard or city police?) and the mayor (in my previous comment referred to as "the city") directed officers to yield the area. The occupiers formed an armed militia and the city ceded control of the block to them. I unfortunately misremembered the timeline and characterized it by stating it the way that I did. Thanks for pointing that out.
Sure but that was in a very liberal city. The USA is a very large country with a full spectrum of reactions. If they would have tried that in say a large city in Texas or Montana the state police would have busted it up within a couple days.
In fairness BLM was far more violent. Neighborhoods were burned to the ground, businesses were looted, people were injured, and several people were killed. Moreover, the BLM protests involved millions of people, so 14K arrests seems believable. Moreover, how many of the arrested were charged (getting arrested on its own isn’t that big of a deal).
Various parts of Kenosha off the top of my head. Most other arson cases were isolated businesses, police precincts, etc. There were also entire neighborhoods in which virtually every business was looted. We had at least a few such neighborhoods in Chicago, and there were many others across the country including many of the communities that BLM folks purport to care about.
It seems like BLM is the new Godwin's Law of protesting. This is like inappropriately invoking the Holocaust.
BLM arose from several extrajudicial murders by police after a history of racism and mistreatment by the state. The trucker protest is essentially about commerce policy in an already very heavily regulated industry. It's hard to imagine other similar jobs where mandating your hours of sleep is discussed by a federal legislature (possibly international treaty too?).
The perspective is important because these are obviously not the same thing.
What’s the distribution? What are the median and 95th percentile donations? It’s impossible to tell if those donations are indicative of anything or merely outliers.
