Mar 212022
 

A few follow-ups to previous posts:

Capture of Tools, to Crush Your Enemies – In this post I warned about the trend of removing access to common tools as a political punishment. I was commenting on the Canadian Trucker Protest, and the use of payment processor and crowdfunding site bannings. I expected to get some pushback about how this was a slippery-slope argument without any proven slipperiness. I did NOT expect for the leader of a major western democracy to swan-dive right to the bottom of that slope a few days later.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared a state of emergency for the first time* in Canada to quell the Trucker Protest. As part of this, he froze over 200 bank accounts. He did this extra-judicially, with no oversight, due process, or recourse for anyone targetted. The targets were “anyone linked to the protest.”

Again, a reminder that “There are no other constitutional rights in substance without freedom to transact.” Taking away someone’s ability to pay their rent, go to their doctor, and seizing their entire life savings, are not small actions. These are weapons of war. Which was again demonstrated just a few week after THIS, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Freezing Russian assets and destroying their ability to transact were actions taken by western governments as weapons in the Ukrainian war! The same weapons Canada used against it’s own citizens.

I seriously did not expect to be vindicated so thoroughly in such a short period of time. It’s kinda faded to the background, now that the potential for WW3 is looming. But at least it’s uncontestable now.

 

Die Mad About It – since the phrase is supposed to refer to decades of unresolved frustration rather than death, but the “Die” part really draws a lot of attention to the death thing… AND because I’m a transhumanist that is hoping for eventual immortality for everyone… a friend suggested amending the phrase to “Live a thousand years mad about it.” I like this better, though it is a bit less snappy. I think I’m willing to trade off a bit of snappiness to be more explicitly NOT wanting someone to die. But if anyone has ideas to snap it up more while preserving the anti-deathism, I’d love suggestions.

 


* – It is the first national one under the lawchange from 1988, a technicality which can be mooted, but which doesn’t change the conclusion.

  2 Responses to “Follow-ups to previous posts”

  1. Long version: May you feel 1000 years of impotent rage and eventually become a good person.
    Meme version: 1000 years of butthurt

  2. “Stay mad about it.”

Leave a Reply to 123 Cancel reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.