Moonbox

It's not a positive thing, for sure, but there is a gaping chasm of difference between briefly freezing bank accounts of protestors vs imprisoning them in their thousands, or outright murdering them and/or making them disappear like in Iran, Russia, China etc. The USA's hypocrisy is more than apparent to most people with a brain. We could go through a long list of US blunders on the foreign scene, the most visible of which is Iran but also recently Afghanistan, Iraq etc. Those failures, however, do nothing to justify Putin's invasion of Ukraine, nor does it make Europe and North America's multi-lateral support for Ukraine any less worthy.

Fair enough, and I agree, but it's hard for everyone. They've already dropped their demand to 6%, which is at least getting reasonable. I suspect they'll end up getting something approaching that, but the brinksmanship we're seeing now is probably not about the CUPE support workers, but rather the teachers themselves, who will certainly use whatever they get as precedent/comparison for what they think teachers should get.

Okay, but then you're not even making a fair comparison between the two. You are presenting BLM in the worst possible light, while trivializing the impact of the Freedom Convoy. If you can't avoid spinning yourself, how can you complain about the media bias with a straight face? Right, but what are you complaining about, exactly? I've already agreed with you that the EA was unjustifiable. I thought we were talking about media biases now. No, they were deeply and broadly unpopular protests and surveys across the country confirmed that, with almost 50% of even conservative party voters disapproving. Whether or not you agreed with the medical experts is irrelevant. This is where you and the truckers lost support and sympathy, because when you start making medical arguments you're no longer arguing about individual freedom of choice, or the economic cost of mandates, but rather broadening it into conspiracy theory, anti-science and culture war garbage. Who said nobody supported them? 20-30% of the population is a lot of people. No, these are two separate issues. A lot of Canadian media has questioned and criticized the EMA. That doesn't mean that they can't still be deeply critical of the freedom convoy protestors. If the inquiry finds that the EMA was an overreach (and they probably will/should), that's not a vindication of the protestors, but rather official censure of law enforcement and lawmaker's incompetence in dealing with them. These protests should have been ended sooner, and they shouldn't have required the nuclear option.

This really isn't how this comparison should be made. I don't know why we would use the average price of a two-bedroom apartment in the most expensive market in Canada and weigh that against low-skilled single-income professionals. If we're talking CUPE support workers, presumably they'd have two incomes supporting a two-bedroom apartment, and we'd at least be looking at the lower-end of prices and/or probably things on the outskirts and suburbs. Regardless, housing and shelter costs are a separate problem altogether and one not limited to school support workers. This, as I've said before, is the bigger issue. CUPE school support workers getting a noticeable raise isn't an outlandish request. That the Teacher's Union will use these increases as the low-water mark for their own negotiations is the problem, and that's the calculus I think that Dofo and his government are running.

or it doesn't, and you just ignorantly power through reality and on to your next delusion, scratching all of the times you were wrong out of memory Or they prefer to listen to the doctors and actual scientists, rather than the inarticulate high school grads doing their own REEesearch. ?

It's not the "Libbies" making "Reee Nazi!" claims. Vladimir Putin is, and his sycophantic admirers are parroting this absurdity. Calling Zelensky a Nazi because of Azov militia volunteers or whatever is like calling Vladimir Putin an Islamic Extremist because of his partnership with Ramzan Kadyrov, or his recruiting of Syrian volunteers. If the she fits indeed. ?

I never said she did. Those were two separate responses to two separate posts. The Trudeau claim was the OP's, not Clare Daly's and that's the first thing I responded to. ? You can certainly make an argument that the US doesn't have clean hands. We have enough examples of their failed foreign policy and present-day Iran is of their own making. The rest of what you're saying is just goofy conspiracy nonsense. You whine and cry about the FBI being a weapon for Biden, while they investigate his son and are appear to be close to laying charges against him. These contradictions never seem to register for you folks.

Very good! Maybe if you read it, you'd notice some differences between Adolf Hitler the leader and founder of the Nazi party, and Zelensky...the Jew. ? If we're going to drop the term Nazi and instead talk about authoritarians, let's examine the differences between Putin and Zelensky then. vs Hmm...

BLM has been beaten to death by you guys, and by conservative media. If we're going to expand the debate outside of Canada, lets also talk about January 6th. but not the Ambassador Bridge. but not for three weeks, in their thousands. Presumably they just left, or were removed by the police. Why the Freedom Convoy ended up as such a faceplant for government and law enforcement is what this inquiry is about. I understand, but there's nothing hypocritical about it. The Freedom Convoy was deeply unpopular and it wasn't because of the media. The Ambassador Bridge blockade set the tone and people were done with the movement right there and then, but they had a deeper and more fundamental problem: The vast majority of Canadians had little/no sympathy for what they were protesting, viewing them as some combination of foolish, selfish and wrong. That there was a bias against the trucker convoy in the media cannot be argued, but since everyone already had a deeply negative view of them, very little spin was required. Because they already knew where the protestors were coming and where they were going, and that's what they do. They weren't going to be able to block the highways and every truck coming into Ottawa, so they tried to make sure that the protest was localized, not pure chaos and that there were emergency lanes still open etc. I don't really know how many more times I can say this. I do question the legitimacy of the EA. I have from the very beginning. I deeply disagreed with it and thought it was at best a gross misuse and misinterpretation of legislation never meant to be used for something like this. The hypocrisy I'm referring to is your repeated complaints about negative rhetoric in the media and in government towards the trucker convoy, while not being able to avoid it yourself.

Authoritarian is not the same thing as a Nazi. Maybe go to the library and read a book and learn something.

No, we don't. If this was the aboriginals or some trans march, it would have been tolerated for awhile, and then dispersed. Interestingly, the trans community has never shut down the Ambassador Bridge or anything like that, and I imagine you'd have trouble finding any examples of them locking a city core down for three weeks. It's not false. We all saw/read/heard the testimony. Pat King was not the only jerk in that protest. That there's nuance to this and it's not as black/white as you'd like it to be is also...not false. Finally this is not a trial, and even if it was, we are fortunate to have trained judges to determine these things rather than online forum posters with questionable legal credentials. and somehow you don't see the hypocrisy of criticizing others for doing the same thing you're telling us you do here. and again, you fall back to exaggerated rhetoric and hyperbole, while misrepresenting and character assassinating people who don't share the same views as you. That you can complain about all of these things and then immediately do it yourself in the same breath is ...I don't even know what to call it.

This is moral equivocation - a shoddy logical construct. It's fair to criticize Justin Trudeau, or the truckers, or both, but if you want to call Trudeau an "authoritarian" of the same stripes as Vladimir Putin, you're being silly. Naive and idealistic are not words that are generally used to describe Clare Daly. If you were being generous, you might call her an anti-establishment activist. If you were being fair, you'd call her a deluded conspiracy theorist following all of the usual politics of the brand, including but not limited to being consistently pro-Russia and pro-dictator any chance she gets. This is the MEP that places like China, Russia, Belarus, Nicaragua and Iran like to feature in their domestic news because she's pretty much just a mouthpiece of everything they want to hear. ?

Because your right to demonstrate and inconvenience others has constitutional limits, and for obvious reasons. ?‍♂️ It wasn't one guy's comments. It was one guy, all of his followers, and then numerous other people and their respective groups. The notion that this was all a kumbaya protest of peace and love is equally dishonest. There's nuance here, going both ways. Certainly, but then maybe you could go back and review your own posts and characterizations of people disagreeing with you. Yeah, it's definitely a problem. How many times have you used "vile" to describe the people you disagree with here? If you honestly asked yourself, could you seriously say you've avoided nasty rhetoric and hyperbole, while sticking to legitimate arguments? ?

Now there's an intelligent question! The idea that Ukraine's born-and-raised Jewish leader became a Nazi doesn't strike you as...moronic? Do you think that maybe this is a buffoonish accusation, completely detached from reality? ? So rather than acknowledging the obvious contradiction of a Jewish Nazi, you figure this is...what? Just another example of those wily Jews playing both sides and "getting around"? Yikes.

Show a link please, either to your screenshot or the actual document. The problem you have is that I often do read them, and then discover that they don't say what you pretend they did. You've linked "research" before that redirects people to French Language Facebooks posts, or videos that don't say what the headlines do, as well as studies that don't make the conclusions you draw. Do your own research is all fine and good, but not when you're just hunting the garbage web for headlines you want to see. ?‍♂️

The Jewish "Nazi" ?. It's not going to happen, so too bad for little Vlad. Who are these other people that are disappearing? Can you name some prominent anti-Biden leaders who've disappeared? Anyone in the US? Canada? Britain? France? ? "But whataaabout" is not an argument. It's a lame deflection. There was likely a lot of ethnic Russians in the Donbass who welcomed Russia, but then there were obviuosly a lot of Ukrainians who didn't. Sending troops across the border and saying "dis Russia now" is not how you solve the problem. It's embarrassing that you typed this out and then actually thought, "Yeah, I should hit Submit" on this masterpiece of wit. ?

That's fair, but you don't just get to protest wherever you want for as long as you want and however you please just because you're not violent. That's what happens when you bring guys like Pat King along. He and his followers deserved most of the criticism, and as we saw in the inquiry some of the protest leaders considered asking him to go home but then cynically decided to keep him around because of how many people were with them. While you may not be guilty of the same things, your association with people like that does speak.

He possibly lost votes among more hardline conservatives by flip-flopping, but also failed to secure the far larger voter share he was courting. Playing footsie with the anti-science and/or anti-mandate crowd right up until it was too late (where he flip-flopped) demonstrated a profound lack of wisdom and sincerity. The Small C's and Blue Libs (the folks who actually decide the elections) wanted nothing to do with him as a result. Liberal voters aren't a homogenous group. I wouldn't typically consider myself one, since I've voted Liberal twice in the last 20 years (and never once provincially). You may not remember my posting history from back in the Harper days, but I was extremely anti-Liberal. That someone like me would turn his back on the federal Conservatives is why they've lost the last three elections against an unpopular PM who's had a negative approval rating since before the pandemic. Regardless, nobody chose "poor economic times" over some potentially better alternative. We're headed for poor economic times regardless of Trudeau, but the economy is one issue among many and it's not like the Conservatives were going to prevent inflation or erase the deficits all of the sudden. What voters did choose was to reject the political weaponization of ignorance and loud noises (Trumpism, let's say).

I don't see how the EMA could have met the threshold. At best it was a wildly liberal interpretation of legislation that was intended to deal with much more serious problems than hooligans in Ottawa. What the inquiry should demonstrate, however, is both the incompetence of our bureaucracy, legislators and law enforcement, along with the dispelling of the myth that this was purely a kumbaya gathering of peaceful freedom lovers. The way the different organizers and leaders have scrambled to distance themselves from the others has been pretty awkward after the fact. Regardless, I think the most important part of this inquiry should be the misuse of the EMA and how shockingly poor the protests were handled by our various levels of government and law enforcement.

but does it actually show that? Can you cite this? You've a tendency to make claims like this where the data you reference doesn't even support what you're saying.

I think you need to check your timelines there, boyo ?.

Comprehend what, exactly? You rant and ramble and tell us exactly what you want to see (sometimes in lists no less) and then tell us afterwards that we have no idea how you feel!? We do, because you tell us! ? If you thought about what you were writing before smashing it out on your keyboard, toned down your emotion and tried to keep your thoughts straight longer than it takes you to finish your next post, you'd contradict yourself way less and not look so foolish. You can't tell us and then try to pretend that you're impartial to the conflict or that you don't support Putin and his invasion. These two ideas are mutually exclusive - they cannot co-exist in a rational mind. If this didn't make it crystal clear where you stand, the fact that all of your energy has been spent attacking Putin's enemies (and none of it has gone against him) definitely does. Squawking about people misrepresenting your direct quotes and then impotently telling them "you don't have the intellect to comprehend" your non-existent rationalization for the inherent contradictions you've made is kind of funny, but mostly pathetic.

As always, your "tHoUgHts" are well-reasoned, objective and totally-not-hysterical.

Interesting logic, seeing as though you keep telling us exactly what you want to see! ?

What's sopping wet is your reasoning. It's correct because without NATO material support, Putin asserts his claims and takes what he pleases, which is very clearly what you want to see: If you didn't support Putin, you wouldn't have spent 99% of your energy in this thread ranting against anyone/everyone who opposed him, and none criticizing him. Saying, "I don't support Putin" doesn't mean much when everything you're saying is in support of him. ?