6 ms·

Foreign support to this movement is not exactly a secret. They were waiving Trump flags, confederate flags and lots of MAGA signs were seen among the protesters

Foreign support to this movement is not exactly a secret. They were waiving Trump flags, confederate flags and lots of MAGA signs were seen among the protesters. Also the movement has been publicized on Fox News and by famous right-wing people in the US, that's just normal that it would eventually lead to a lot of people in the US deciding to start donating. The simplest explanation is more likely than the conspiracy that the Canadian government had time to make up fake donations from the US.

hammock 5y ago
- gpm 5y ago
  Because they're all symbols of foreign political figures/deceased foreign governments?
  - hammock 5y ago
    - gpm 5y ago
      No, but if a bunch of people flying Peurto Rican flags swarm the Texas legislature it's probably reasonable to assume that there is a degree of support from people in Puerto Rico/outside of texas.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- ben_w 5y ago
  Commenting only on the flags themselves and not the protest or the hack: Canada is not part of the USA. Trump was a President of the USA not Canada; the Confederacy was made from the bits of the USA furthest away from Canada; and while a literal interpretation of the word “America” in the initialism “Make America Great Again” would refer to the entire continent, it is usually understood as specifically just the USA and not Canada (and definitely not Mexico or Cuba let alone the rest). Flags are widely used as a symbol of identity. Could be an (excuse the term, I can think of none other that fits) false flag, but there’s a reason why that term exists.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    Honnestly, there's a lot more people moving from Canada to the US than the reverse. Maybe there's a desire to embrace the American way (of course, the state media won't touch it!). When hiring, we get a ton of resumes from Canada to transfer to the US but the reverse almost never happens.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      I’ve just looked up the numbers, about 810k Canadian-born people in the USA (2017) and 377k US-born people in Canada (2016). Adjusting for population sizes (USA has ~9 times the population), a random Canadian is about 4 times more likely to go south than a random American is to go north. But there’s a reason I was focusing on just the symbolism, and that’s that I know how limited my knowledge is in this instance.
- mrtesthah 5y ago
  Foreign support is grossly apparent from the leaked data. Individual donors 36,975 Canadian 55,870 Foreign 92,845 Total Amount donated $4,311,287 Canadian $12,532,326 Foreign $16,843,613 Total
  - crtasm 5y ago
    There aren't 92k individual donors - some people donated multiple times. There's 90,030 unique emails listed and 2 entries with no email.
  - sam_goody 5y ago
    I think that most people mean "foreign" as foreign government (such as CCP) support, not just support from middle-class Americans (and Europeans) who identify with the protests and happen to be foreigners. And while it could be that foreign governments have donated with false identities over GSG, it is more likely that they would send in people to figure out who is really capable of moving things, and contact them with cash, tips, and resources. (I am not commenting on the envoy, as so far have only seen it in news outlets [such as CNN & NYT on the left and Fox on the right] who have not earned my trust - so I do not know what is really happening.)
    - gpm 5y ago
      As a Canadian I absolutely count donations from foreigners in the US and Europe as foreign money and absolutely think that that should be illegal (though I have no clue as to what the current legal status of that is).
- talentedcoin 5y ago
  Because Canada is not part of the USA?
mrtesthah 5y ago
>The simplest explanation is more likely than the conspiracy that the Canadian government had time to make up fake donations from the US. Isn't it convenient how all contradicting evidence is dismissed by evidence-free conspiracy theories? https://www.wired.com/video/watch/why-you-can-never-argue-with-conspiracy-theorists https://www.wired.com/video/watch/why-you-can-never-argue-wi... And the evidence from the leak is fully testable and falsifiable! You could literally just email people who donated and ask them.
blast 5y ago
This is a bit removed from your point about foreign support, but the flag thing appears to have been exaggerated for political purposes. The Confederate flag guy was shunned by the protestors and stood out like a sore thumb to begin with: https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1487834109678395392 https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1487834109678395392. (I'm not endorsing that Twitter account - it's the only link I know of to the video, and the video is interesting.) It has also been commonly reported that the protestors are Nazis carrying Nazi flags, but this reporting is also excessively politicized. Here's a first-person account giving a completely different picture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtN4VqBeCMg#t=6932 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtN4VqBeCMg#t=6932. There are hundreds of hours of livestreams on youtube showing the protests. Anyone can dip in at random and get a sense. That's how I ran across that last link of the guy talking about the swastika flag. From the livestreams it seems clear that this is an authentic and peaceful working class protest, not some far right "insurrection" (a word that has also been chosen for political reasons). The most fascinating aspect of this event is what it reveals about the class divide in Canada, and the West in general, since each country has its own version of this right now.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  Honestly the odds that was a fed are pretty high. The father had feds planting explosive in people’s mailboxes [0] and tried to pin it on some political group he didn’t like back in the 70’s. Feds were forced to confessed when one got busted doing it, quite literally red-handed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_controversies_involving_the_Royal_Canadian_Mounted_Police#Break-ins_and_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_controversies_involvin...
- BeefWellington 5y ago
  > From the livestreams it seems clear that this is an authentic and peaceful working class protest, not some sort of far right "insurrection" (a word that has also been chosen for political reasons). The most fascinating aspect of this event is what it reveals about the class divide in Canada, or the West in general, since each country has its own version of this right now. This is actually quite disingenuous. All it tells you is the general comportment of what people are doing around those livestreaming (who are almost all clearly marked). What you aren't seeing or being exposed to in this way are the countless complaints of harassment, death threats, and rape threats the people living in this area are facing on a routine basis, even when the person being threatened was trying to help the protestors.[1][2][3][4] As I've mentioned in other places, there's a lot of protests in Ottawa. It's the nation's capital and it's often a symbolic target if nothing else. Ottawa's citizens are familiar with protestors. This is a whole different ballgame. In terms of it being working class, I think that's also a disingenuous label. As you can see in this walk through of the stopped convoy, there's VERY FEW actual big rigs participating, and the people here are largely driving recent pickups.[5] These are not put-out truckers, these are anti-vax/anti-mandate people from across the spectrum, and not a lot of them. [1]: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ottaw-tow-truck-operator-receives-hundreds-of-threats-from-both-sides-of-the-convoy https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ottaw-tow-truck-op... [2]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/moo-shu-ice-cream-employee-assaulted-ottawa-1.6341207 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/moo-shu-ice-cream-empl... [3]: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/unruly-protesters-prompt-early-closure-of-two-downtown-grocery-stores https://ottawacitizen.com/news/unruly-protesters-prompt-earl... [4]: https://globalnews.ca/news/8594809/covid-freedom-convoy-ottawa-masks/ https://globalnews.ca/news/8594809/covid-freedom-convoy-otta... -> Multiple sources in first paragraph. [5]: https://mobile.twitter.com/Gray_Mackenzie/status/1492913904879558664 https://mobile.twitter.com/Gray_Mackenzie/status/14929139048...

hammock 5y ago

gpm 5y ago
Because they're all symbols of foreign political figures/deceased foreign governments?
- hammock 5y ago
  - gpm 5y ago
    No, but if a bunch of people flying Peurto Rican flags swarm the Texas legislature it's probably reasonable to assume that there is a degree of support from people in Puerto Rico/outside of texas.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
ben_w 5y ago
Commenting only on the flags themselves and not the protest or the hack: Canada is not part of the USA. Trump was a President of the USA not Canada; the Confederacy was made from the bits of the USA furthest away from Canada; and while a literal interpretation of the word “America” in the initialism “Make America Great Again” would refer to the entire continent, it is usually understood as specifically just the USA and not Canada (and definitely not Mexico or Cuba let alone the rest). Flags are widely used as a symbol of identity. Could be an (excuse the term, I can think of none other that fits) false flag, but there’s a reason why that term exists.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  Honnestly, there's a lot more people moving from Canada to the US than the reverse. Maybe there's a desire to embrace the American way (of course, the state media won't touch it!). When hiring, we get a ton of resumes from Canada to transfer to the US but the reverse almost never happens.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    I’ve just looked up the numbers, about 810k Canadian-born people in the USA (2017) and 377k US-born people in Canada (2016). Adjusting for population sizes (USA has ~9 times the population), a random Canadian is about 4 times more likely to go south than a random American is to go north. But there’s a reason I was focusing on just the symbolism, and that’s that I know how limited my knowledge is in this instance.
mrtesthah 5y ago
Foreign support is grossly apparent from the leaked data. Individual donors 36,975 Canadian 55,870 Foreign 92,845 Total Amount donated $4,311,287 Canadian $12,532,326 Foreign $16,843,613 Total
- crtasm 5y ago
  There aren't 92k individual donors - some people donated multiple times. There's 90,030 unique emails listed and 2 entries with no email.
- sam_goody 5y ago
  I think that most people mean "foreign" as foreign government (such as CCP) support, not just support from middle-class Americans (and Europeans) who identify with the protests and happen to be foreigners. And while it could be that foreign governments have donated with false identities over GSG, it is more likely that they would send in people to figure out who is really capable of moving things, and contact them with cash, tips, and resources. (I am not commenting on the envoy, as so far have only seen it in news outlets [such as CNN & NYT on the left and Fox on the right] who have not earned my trust - so I do not know what is really happening.)
  - gpm 5y ago
    As a Canadian I absolutely count donations from foreigners in the US and Europe as foreign money and absolutely think that that should be illegal (though I have no clue as to what the current legal status of that is).
talentedcoin 5y ago
Because Canada is not part of the USA?

mrtesthah 5y ago

>The simplest explanation is more likely than the conspiracy that the Canadian government had time to make up fake donations from the US. Isn't it convenient how all contradicting evidence is dismissed by evidence-free conspiracy theories? https://www.wired.com/video/watch/why-you-can-never-argue-with-conspiracy-theorists https://www.wired.com/video/watch/why-you-can-never-argue-wi... And the evidence from the leak is fully testable and falsifiable! You could literally just email people who donated and ask them.

blast 5y ago

This is a bit removed from your point about foreign support, but the flag thing appears to have been exaggerated for political purposes. The Confederate flag guy was shunned by the protestors and stood out like a sore thumb to begin with: https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1487834109678395392 https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1487834109678395392. (I'm not endorsing that Twitter account - it's the only link I know of to the video, and the video is interesting.) It has also been commonly reported that the protestors are Nazis carrying Nazi flags, but this reporting is also excessively politicized. Here's a first-person account giving a completely different picture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtN4VqBeCMg#t=6932 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtN4VqBeCMg#t=6932. There are hundreds of hours of livestreams on youtube showing the protests. Anyone can dip in at random and get a sense. That's how I ran across that last link of the guy talking about the swastika flag. From the livestreams it seems clear that this is an authentic and peaceful working class protest, not some far right "insurrection" (a word that has also been chosen for political reasons). The most fascinating aspect of this event is what it reveals about the class divide in Canada, and the West in general, since each country has its own version of this right now.

908B64B197 5y ago
Honestly the odds that was a fed are pretty high. The father had feds planting explosive in people’s mailboxes [0] and tried to pin it on some political group he didn’t like back in the 70’s. Feds were forced to confessed when one got busted doing it, quite literally red-handed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_controversies_involving_the_Royal_Canadian_Mounted_Police#Break-ins_and_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_controversies_involvin...
BeefWellington 5y ago
> From the livestreams it seems clear that this is an authentic and peaceful working class protest, not some sort of far right "insurrection" (a word that has also been chosen for political reasons). The most fascinating aspect of this event is what it reveals about the class divide in Canada, or the West in general, since each country has its own version of this right now. This is actually quite disingenuous. All it tells you is the general comportment of what people are doing around those livestreaming (who are almost all clearly marked). What you aren't seeing or being exposed to in this way are the countless complaints of harassment, death threats, and rape threats the people living in this area are facing on a routine basis, even when the person being threatened was trying to help the protestors.[1][2][3][4] As I've mentioned in other places, there's a lot of protests in Ottawa. It's the nation's capital and it's often a symbolic target if nothing else. Ottawa's citizens are familiar with protestors. This is a whole different ballgame. In terms of it being working class, I think that's also a disingenuous label. As you can see in this walk through of the stopped convoy, there's VERY FEW actual big rigs participating, and the people here are largely driving recent pickups.[5] These are not put-out truckers, these are anti-vax/anti-mandate people from across the spectrum, and not a lot of them. [1]: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ottaw-tow-truck-operator-receives-hundreds-of-threats-from-both-sides-of-the-convoy https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ottaw-tow-truck-op... [2]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/moo-shu-ice-cream-employee-assaulted-ottawa-1.6341207 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/moo-shu-ice-cream-empl... [3]: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/unruly-protesters-prompt-early-closure-of-two-downtown-grocery-stores https://ottawacitizen.com/news/unruly-protesters-prompt-earl... [4]: https://globalnews.ca/news/8594809/covid-freedom-convoy-ottawa-masks/ https://globalnews.ca/news/8594809/covid-freedom-convoy-otta... -> Multiple sources in first paragraph. [5]: https://mobile.twitter.com/Gray_Mackenzie/status/1492913904879558664 https://mobile.twitter.com/Gray_Mackenzie/status/14929139048...