I cannot fathom someone thinking a down syndrome person is capable of consent when a 17 year old isn't, when in a few short months they magically will be, and they've already been asked to make decisions about military service or thousands of dollars of debt for college. With a lot of handicapped folks, sex and consent are not as straightforward as with the general population. The power dynamics are often disparate, so coercion and manipulation are easier. What scares me about this is it somehow sexualizes people with her condition, and casts them as sexual actors when they otherwise wouldn't be.
Sounds like things are starting to pop off in Ukraine. Some shelling has occurred and both sides are pointing fingers at each other.
Russia is the aggressor here and no one should forget that. You can’t waltz up to someone’s property, surround it entirely and surprised if they get upset about it. Creating a false pretext for something Putin always wanted to do is part of the disinformation playbook.
So what you're saying is Russia shot some mortars into an unoccupied area of their own territory, said Ukraine did it, and then started shelling Ukraine?
I told the doc at the ER that Ukraine got this thing stuck up there while trying to stimulate my prostate.
What gets me is how surprised and indignant they are. You can be arrested?! For civil disobedience?! Since when?!
They're telling the cops they're peacefully protesting. Except... they drove trucks and blocked the city. And started honking their horns. Specifically not to be peaceful, to be disruptive. That's... not how you peacefully protest. I fail to see how this is any different than the looting and burning of buildings that occurred in the US. Different side of the same coin.
Yeah, no shit. I don't have a deep knowledge of how Canadian politics work, but my understanding is that the PM is generally limited in his authority to do policing since that responsibility is generally held by provincial governments. So Trudeau did not have the normal authority to really do much, and because it made him look weak regardless of that reality, he dramatically overreacted by using the Emergencies Act to grant himself the authority to crack down on people honking their horns and blocking traffic. He justified it by saying they were just a bunch of Neo-Nazis, but it sounds like there was only one (?) person actually waving a Nazi flag? Big yikes.
from what I've seen in the videos, and heard from friends who live in the area, there's much more of a far right presence than that. Apparently a lot of the backers -- organizers, people bringing fuel and supplies to the truckers, those running logistics, funding it, etc -- are openly nazi supporters/trump supporters (both or at the same time). Obviously not first hand, but I do trust that information. Imo this is a combination of cabin fever from extended lockdowns, combined with idiots who "did their own research" and were incentivized to act knowing there was some kind of backing or "movement" behind them, furthered by the Canadian approach to policing nicely -- which I generally agree with, but think the US approach of "fuck you, shut this shit down right now" would have been better in this specific circumstance. No one does this kind of stupid shit alone though. They had to know they were gonna be supported financially and logistically.
That sounds like an awful lot of “probablys” and “maybes” to warrant arresting people for protesting, expanding the scope of money laundering laws to freeze bank accounts and banning the assembly of people not being violent. The protestors’ cause is idiotic, but this seems like an extreme overreach by the government.
As for the money thing, it always felt inevitable to me. People are acting like it's a massive scandal, but there were millions of dollars in foreign money flowing into an opaque political organization that didn't seem to be dispersing the money to actual protest activities. In what world does that not bring the attention of the Feds?
I'm just not sure I agree with this being "nonviolent" anymore. At least, it certainly isn't peaceful right? If I were to park my truck outside your house, blocking traffic for weeks, honking my horn constantly, you would call the cops on me right? And it doesn't matter if I was "protesting" or not, correct?
We have very different definitions of what constitutes “violence”. Sure, I’d call the cops. But that doesn’t mean I’d want your bank accounts frozen and the President granting himself extraordinary authority over it.
It’s 2022. The belief that protests are meant to be (and should be) disruptive and uncomfortable is no longer valid.