4 ms·

Just so it’s clear, this is a conservative staffer fired by a conservative government for donating to a far(ther) right cause.

inter_netuser 5y ago
Correct. Have there been any Democrat staffers fired over donations to BLM? P.S. As a working class protest over conditions of employment, one could even frame this into a typical socialist strike type of thing, if it were politically profitable. Some of the left persuasion even worry that this sets precedent for extra-judicial strike funds seizures in the future. I don't even know how "return to normalcy" (probably the shortest way to summarize the convoy's demands) is right or left, it is quite sad that we are discussing such basic concepts on the basis of blue-red spectrum.
- nathanaldensr 5y ago
  It shows how deeply the false dichotomy has taken root.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  It's not a working class protest, neither is it a strike. For a protest to consist as working class, it needs to have the support of the working class - which it doesn't, since trucking unions came out against it. It also needs to be for the interests of the working class, which it doesn't seem to be at all. It's not a strike either, because they're not withholding labour, they're complaining about not being able to labour. Also, if you're trying to frame this in socialist point of view, that doesn't work either, because the owners-operators that are the focal point of the protest aren't even working class, from a socialist point of view they're middle class or petit-bourgeois (depending on if they rent out their rig). They also typically make around twice the median wage despite living in a low cost of living, and are much wealthier than the average Canadian. As far as the frozen funds precedents, I agree.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    The trucking union leaders also donate to Justin Trudeau's party and are friends. Saying that these leaders views represent the truckers views is not correct. Truckers even if they are small business owners can be part of the working class. So can plumbers and other trades who often own their own business. Framing working class status around money is missing key elements. Someone willing to work with their hands will be looked down by an university employee even if the trades person makes much more. Was there a class issue in Ottawa? It appears so. Residents were afraid because these Canadians were different. They hide inside and looked for stories of violence. One lawyer on television went as far as to say he hide inside because he felt appeared different in a suit and a mask. Ottawa downtown residents are more likely to be top national lawyer with connections to the elite than to a drywaller.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      > Framing working class status around money is missing key elements. Someone willing to work with their hands will be looked down by an university employee even if the trades person makes much more. It's not about money primarily. It's about social relations. Do you have to answer to a boss? Are you self sufficient? Do you have employees? That decides what your interests are, who you align yourself to politically and socially, and so on. In everything that matters practically and politically, a tradesperson running their own business is much closer to, say, a freelance programmer or even a lawyer in class interests than any actually working class person. > Was there a class issue in Ottawa? It appears so. Residents were afraid because these Canadians were different. They hide inside and looked for stories of violence. One lawyer on television went as far as to say he hide inside because he felt appeared different in a suit and a mask. Ottawa downtown residents are more likely to be top national lawyer with connections to the elite than to a drywaller. That's a question of culture and appearances, not of class, economics, interests or politics. Sure, a resident in the parts they were annoying is more likely to be an elite lawyer than a drywaller, but they're much more likely to be a service worker than either, and you just can't make the argument that someone stocking shelves or doing data-entry isn't working class while a small business owner is. Because small business owners aren't working class. They don't have a boss trying to make money out of them. They don't have to worry about being fired. They have more than just their brains and brawns to make money for them - they have capital too. They have zero interest in labour rights, in fact, their interest is against them. Their actual interests are orthogonal to the working class. Beyond that, it's inarguable that the protest organizers wanted to project the aesthetics of violence. You can't say they were trying to conjure up stories of violence when Pat King was out there making threats and talking about actual violence. > The trucking union leaders also donate to Justin Trudeau's party and are friends. Saying that these leaders views represent the truckers views is not correct. How do you know that they're friends? Do you have any example of a union that doesn't donate to powerful political parties? Because that's what unions do, they look out for their members. That means playing politics, donating money to sympathetic parties in power, and networking. They sure as hell are closer to the views of truckers in my experience, and they're actually going after the real interests of the average trucker. In reality, the only thing here are aesthetics. It's all the aesthetics of a working class uprising, with none of the actual substance. None of the things they're fighting for apply to the concern of a typical labourer. Their tactics are completely different - instead of withholding their power and exerting it over their workplaces, they're trying to take the public hostage. There's no mass movement there - they want to go directly against the will and the interests of the majority. Their icons aren't even working class. There's no worker solidarity either, it's all about taking the many hostage and inconveniencing them, instead of showing the masses they have the power to bend society to their will. It's a middle-class to petit-bourgeois concern trying to pass off as working class aesthetically, but the actual substance contradicts this. That's why the public even supported, for example, teacher's strikes even when they inconvenienced them, but they were never even remotely on board with the convoys.
scj 5y ago
A legislative staffer donating to an organization outside the jurisdiction of Canada which vowed to ignore Canadian finance laws... By population, we're a small country. If this becomes a regular occurrence, Canadians are going to need to pay for the tax burden of policing foreign-financed supercharged protest groups! Beyond that, giving foreigners input on Canadian policy through money is undemocratic. I miss American benign neglect.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  Every single NGO and charity in Canada, including politically active NGOs, can and do receive foreign funding. It's perfectly legal, and it is very much a regular occurrence. David Suzuki Foundation at some point received over 50% of its funding from foreign sources. Quite honestly, the common attitude around this whole foreign funding is "I don't want foreign money funding causes I personally don't like". Everyone is an internationalist, until that becomes personally inconvenient, in this case politically.
  - ksaj 5y ago
    I don't recall that David Suzuki ever cost Canadians significant amounts of money in policing. That's what OP was talking about - the cost of policing. There is also the significant cleanup. If David Suzuki conducted a protest, then his organization would be expected to pay for the license, the cleanup, and the policing. I don't know what the final bill will be, but this one event is well into the tens of millions. Nobody from the protest seems too interested in paying for these expenses, and instead are hoping to leave it to Canadians to pay through taxes.
    - frabbit 5y ago
      Couldn't they just criminally charge David Suzuki for "counselling to commit mischief" (current charge against the protest "leader") if he says that tree-sitting to stop old-growth fortest destruction is a good idea? Sounds like democracy costs money to police. It would be much easier to just be able to "clear out" downtown (as the CBC puts it).

inter_netuser 5y ago

Correct. Have there been any Democrat staffers fired over donations to BLM? P.S. As a working class protest over conditions of employment, one could even frame this into a typical socialist strike type of thing, if it were politically profitable. Some of the left persuasion even worry that this sets precedent for extra-judicial strike funds seizures in the future. I don't even know how "return to normalcy" (probably the shortest way to summarize the convoy's demands) is right or left, it is quite sad that we are discussing such basic concepts on the basis of blue-red spectrum.

nathanaldensr 5y ago
It shows how deeply the false dichotomy has taken root.
sudosysgen 5y ago
It's not a working class protest, neither is it a strike. For a protest to consist as working class, it needs to have the support of the working class - which it doesn't, since trucking unions came out against it. It also needs to be for the interests of the working class, which it doesn't seem to be at all. It's not a strike either, because they're not withholding labour, they're complaining about not being able to labour. Also, if you're trying to frame this in socialist point of view, that doesn't work either, because the owners-operators that are the focal point of the protest aren't even working class, from a socialist point of view they're middle class or petit-bourgeois (depending on if they rent out their rig). They also typically make around twice the median wage despite living in a low cost of living, and are much wealthier than the average Canadian. As far as the frozen funds precedents, I agree.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  The trucking union leaders also donate to Justin Trudeau's party and are friends. Saying that these leaders views represent the truckers views is not correct. Truckers even if they are small business owners can be part of the working class. So can plumbers and other trades who often own their own business. Framing working class status around money is missing key elements. Someone willing to work with their hands will be looked down by an university employee even if the trades person makes much more. Was there a class issue in Ottawa? It appears so. Residents were afraid because these Canadians were different. They hide inside and looked for stories of violence. One lawyer on television went as far as to say he hide inside because he felt appeared different in a suit and a mask. Ottawa downtown residents are more likely to be top national lawyer with connections to the elite than to a drywaller.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    > Framing working class status around money is missing key elements. Someone willing to work with their hands will be looked down by an university employee even if the trades person makes much more. It's not about money primarily. It's about social relations. Do you have to answer to a boss? Are you self sufficient? Do you have employees? That decides what your interests are, who you align yourself to politically and socially, and so on. In everything that matters practically and politically, a tradesperson running their own business is much closer to, say, a freelance programmer or even a lawyer in class interests than any actually working class person. > Was there a class issue in Ottawa? It appears so. Residents were afraid because these Canadians were different. They hide inside and looked for stories of violence. One lawyer on television went as far as to say he hide inside because he felt appeared different in a suit and a mask. Ottawa downtown residents are more likely to be top national lawyer with connections to the elite than to a drywaller. That's a question of culture and appearances, not of class, economics, interests or politics. Sure, a resident in the parts they were annoying is more likely to be an elite lawyer than a drywaller, but they're much more likely to be a service worker than either, and you just can't make the argument that someone stocking shelves or doing data-entry isn't working class while a small business owner is. Because small business owners aren't working class. They don't have a boss trying to make money out of them. They don't have to worry about being fired. They have more than just their brains and brawns to make money for them - they have capital too. They have zero interest in labour rights, in fact, their interest is against them. Their actual interests are orthogonal to the working class. Beyond that, it's inarguable that the protest organizers wanted to project the aesthetics of violence. You can't say they were trying to conjure up stories of violence when Pat King was out there making threats and talking about actual violence. > The trucking union leaders also donate to Justin Trudeau's party and are friends. Saying that these leaders views represent the truckers views is not correct. How do you know that they're friends? Do you have any example of a union that doesn't donate to powerful political parties? Because that's what unions do, they look out for their members. That means playing politics, donating money to sympathetic parties in power, and networking. They sure as hell are closer to the views of truckers in my experience, and they're actually going after the real interests of the average trucker. In reality, the only thing here are aesthetics. It's all the aesthetics of a working class uprising, with none of the actual substance. None of the things they're fighting for apply to the concern of a typical labourer. Their tactics are completely different - instead of withholding their power and exerting it over their workplaces, they're trying to take the public hostage. There's no mass movement there - they want to go directly against the will and the interests of the majority. Their icons aren't even working class. There's no worker solidarity either, it's all about taking the many hostage and inconveniencing them, instead of showing the masses they have the power to bend society to their will. It's a middle-class to petit-bourgeois concern trying to pass off as working class aesthetically, but the actual substance contradicts this. That's why the public even supported, for example, teacher's strikes even when they inconvenienced them, but they were never even remotely on board with the convoys.

scj 5y ago

A legislative staffer donating to an organization outside the jurisdiction of Canada which vowed to ignore Canadian finance laws... By population, we're a small country. If this becomes a regular occurrence, Canadians are going to need to pay for the tax burden of policing foreign-financed supercharged protest groups! Beyond that, giving foreigners input on Canadian policy through money is undemocratic. I miss American benign neglect.

inter_netuser 5y ago
Every single NGO and charity in Canada, including politically active NGOs, can and do receive foreign funding. It's perfectly legal, and it is very much a regular occurrence. David Suzuki Foundation at some point received over 50% of its funding from foreign sources. Quite honestly, the common attitude around this whole foreign funding is "I don't want foreign money funding causes I personally don't like". Everyone is an internationalist, until that becomes personally inconvenient, in this case politically.
- ksaj 5y ago
  I don't recall that David Suzuki ever cost Canadians significant amounts of money in policing. That's what OP was talking about - the cost of policing. There is also the significant cleanup. If David Suzuki conducted a protest, then his organization would be expected to pay for the license, the cleanup, and the policing. I don't know what the final bill will be, but this one event is well into the tens of millions. Nobody from the protest seems too interested in paying for these expenses, and instead are hoping to leave it to Canadians to pay through taxes.
  - frabbit 5y ago
    Couldn't they just criminally charge David Suzuki for "counselling to commit mischief" (current charge against the protest "leader") if he says that tree-sitting to stop old-growth fortest destruction is a good idea? Sounds like democracy costs money to police. It would be much easier to just be able to "clear out" downtown (as the CBC puts it).