I’m curious – I’ve looked at this a little in the past, but paused once the payment requirement showed up. Doesn’t feel like it really matters at all about using a VPN or otherwise to try and hide my identity, if there’s a charge on a credit card that proves I use a torrenting service… ? How are people sorting that out, or are we all just pretending you can’t get tracked through a payment?

Lots of people seem to think it’s either or, and it really shouldn’t be, in my view. (I’ll note I’m canadian, since it seems to matter to some these days).

The argument that foreigners shouldn’t be allowed to protest is to me somewhat valid, but with a bunch of reservations. Peaceful protests, publishing op eds, (obviously) University papers, online posts, and other ‘regular’ forms of expression I’m totally in agreement that they should be allowed to express themselves/participate.

But we’ve also seen cases in Canada where our immigration levels got so high, that we literally had CCP organized protests in favour of a detained Chinese CCP Billionaire, as well as the tearing down of “peaceful protests”/awareness things in regards to HongKong and the crack down the CCP did there. We’ve seen large, organized groups of Indian students – their messages of “go get free food” being amplified by foreign controlled social media – draining our food banks dry, the loss of that social support helping to fuel class conflicts and increased animosity towards Indian people as a demographic. We’ve seen ‘protests’ leveraged by foreign powers to sow discontent and animosity intentionally, and/or to control the narrative around news stories.

And that’s really no surprise: one of the stated methodologies of authoritarian regimes, for attacking democracies, is to basically sow civil unrest through the amplification of contested issues/topics. They’ll amplify/fund controversial right-wing and left-wing viewpoints in order to cause internal conflict. They’ll hype up race conflicts. Like how the majority of people are totally fine saying both “Hamas is bad” and “Israel’s genocidal actions in gaza are bad”, but somehow it’s always framed as just a 2 sided thing where you’re on one side or the other, is great for authoritarians: why fight a democracy, when you can make it fight itself. If we’re accepting Students/people from authoritarian regimes, we have to be realistic in acknowledging many of these people will share the regimes beliefs, and will be actively working against our governments / peoples. They aren’t the stereotypical refugee seeking a better/freer life, but rather people with malicious intentions and a desire to disrupt.

So I’m fine with such people having visas and non-permanent citizenship revoked if the person’s involved in criminal activity (violent protests), and/or if they’re a primary organizer/instigator/funder of such things, or (as was the case with some ‘student’ groups in Canada) they’re actively coordinating their protests with foreign embassies/agents. I’d also be in favour of increased scrutiny of people from such regions when it comes to long term stays / partial immigration (where they don’t renounce their former non-democratic country). Lots of countries also expect singular citizenship, I see no particular issue with western democracies at least requiring that their citizens not support/be registered citizens of authoritarian dictatorships. If you want to live in an egalitarian/democratic country, you shouldn’t be supportive of authoritarian autocracies/dictatorships.

And again, similar to the note about ‘one side or the other’, in terms of free speech, most folks generally recognise that there are some reasonable restrictions / repercussions involved with it. Hate speech, explicitly calling for the killing of some group of people or what have you, clearly not a ‘right’ for most sane people – at least, not one that wouldn’t come with consequences. In the same way that the left is fine boycotting Musk for his Nazi salutes (he’s free to express himself as a Nazi, and other people are free to take issue with that / not support him because of it), foreigners explicitly challenging the existing norms of society should be prepared for potential consequences if they do so in a manner deemed inappropriate.

Yes.

I haven’t really spoken to any of my green reps before, in terms of them running for the seat. I have had interactions with my NDP MLA and MP, and have been left thoroughly disappointed with the results.

I don’t think a whip position is really that big a deal for a party, until they have enough people elected to make it matter.

In Canada its termed EDI https://www.canada.ca/en/research-coordinating-committee/priorities/equity-diversity-inclusion-research.html

We do see requirements for people to state whether they’re an Employment Equity group – or rather, options to positively identify as an employment equity group so that you can get passed that ‘check’ on the hiring process. The government of Canada will literally send you a note saying you’ve been kicked out of the application pool for ‘not’ identifying as such on their forms, for example. And the only group that isn’t an employment equity group, are cis white men. The checkboxes to identify as FN are also “optional”, but generally translate into more benefits/privileges in hiring and so on.

The Employment equity act is a derived document that changes the Charter’s general assertions in 15(1)(2) into specific groups which, the verbiage of which excludes only cis white men. The Charter says “no discrimination based on race/gender”, the EEA says “you can positively discriminate in favour of any group except cis white guys”.

No, I’m not surprised in the slightest by either of these, seeing as I’ve known about these things for decades, and seeing as I’ve received “You didn’t identify as an Equity Employment Group” rejection letters from the federal government in the past.

Eh, good luck to them. I find it hard to take them seriously at this point, though I’ve historically voted green in most elections. Their leadership fiasco recently was an absolute embarrassment, and honestly a huge blow against the DEI policies they encourage. Having May there again is also a bit of a flag, as going back to the previous leader who wanted out makes it seem like there’s a real lack of leadership options / sustainability in the party’s gov structure.

Their candidates are pretty clearly still heavily fringe oriented, with very hard left leaning stances when you read through bios. This time around it seems like my local candidate has very questionable qualifications, basically just being a FN grandmother with five kids of her own at ~45. I don’t see how that’d represent me/my interests locally or nationally in the house, especially as a non FN. They’re still beating that demographic politics marching drum, but it cuts both ways. You can’t realistically put a candidate forward saying they’re all about their own demographic interests, and supporting their own demographic slice, without alienating people who aren’t part of that slice. Especially if there’s no other substance to the candidate.

The party’s ‘platform’/position on topics isn’t really costed out from what I could see on their site. Tons of spending, main thing they seem to note for generating revenue is the ever nebulous ‘closing business tax loop holes’ type thing. They seem to imply they’re going to create redundancies in some areas of gov, whole new agencies, make good on every costly suggestion of the MMIWG, and on and on. Feels hollow to me, especially seeing where the markets are currently.

Top that off with some of their positions being a bit vague, and potentially really authoritarian. Like saying they’re going to make online sites subject to the same regulation as publishers in regards to hate speech etc. Suddenly community forums like Lemmy would potentially be liable for anything anyone writes, if that’s implemented the way it’s described. And as a far left party, they’d uphold the most restrictive/authoritarian definitions of what constitutes hate speech I’m sure.

I’ve been negative on what’s going on in Israel for a long time, but I admit I’m not overly motivated to go into the streets and clutch my pearls in dismay.

The Canadian govt and organisations in general, to my understanding, aren’t really giving a ton of weapons for use in this crap. And clearly, our government’s stance has basically zero weight with other countries at this point – especially with the USA trying to annex us / starting preparations to conduct a Russian style invasion (they’re listing ‘fentanyl’ as a WMD next, so that they can use the tiny amount that crosses their border as an excuse to invade their neighbours it seems).

The issue of the USA falling apart, given its historic central role in most western/democratic pushes, is a bigger issue for most of us, than the deterioration of an area that lacks democracy. I mean, the USA’s authoritarian trend is what’s enabling Israel to do these things in some ways. The states falling apart is also a lot more ‘directly’ impactful for citizens in western countries – we notice when the USA decides to wage an economic war against us, more than we notice the atrocities occurring on the other side of the world.

There’s also only so much time you can dedicate to ‘protesting’, in between working a regular job to provide for your basic necessities. People’re tired man, and focusing on the protests that mean the most to them.

Sure, but you’re framing that in a way to be as positive as possible about it. How about, “the 18 year old that wanted to defend criminals and get them out of violent crime offenses for huge profits”, and went into debt to pursue what they thought was going to be a hugely profitable career? Do you really think regular people, who go into debt just ~40k based on what the article states, should also be comp’ing that other case with perks/debt forgiveness? The article is specifically using an outlier case, who went into debt for a profession that’s respectable, to skew opinions…

Student debt is an issue in the states, I don’t disagree on that as far as I understand it at least. It’s just that a lot of the articles around the subject seem very heavily skewed by political bias, which is annoying. And me being annoyed by that, and wanting more neutral discussion, I don’t think of as bootlicking.

This seems… misleading, in a weird way. Even some of the comments are confusing, though I may be just clueless as I’m not American (I’m Canadian, so don’t know any people directly impacted by this to question in person).

There are comments here saying it’s really tough because low interest private loans are less available. People noting huge increases in their monthly payments (by percent, but often not noting the actual dollar value from what I can see?).

The article notes that the average student loan debt is around $38k. Even with a terrible interest rate of like 12%, which is what my local Credit Union offers for personal loans, that’s a monthly payment of $500 for ~10 years. The guy in the article is an outlier it seems, in that he has a 6.3% interest rate and payments around $5000 – so while the average person is out 38k, this guys in the hole by like $400k+?? The reason it costs them as much as a mortgage payment, is cause they spent as much as a house getting his education. I doubt education costs ‘skyrocketed’ partway through his education, so he would’ve seen that bill coming. And for the price of that education, I’m guessing he could run the numbers with more accuracy ahead of time, and make an informed/educated decision on whether to take out those loans.

pot -> kettle

The states has been moving towards authoritarian corporate control for a long time though. The freedom cities controlled by big tech, setup in whatever country they want, operating outside ‘local’ regulations, with services via satellite and protection via US military, very much fits with what Starlink has done. Techs push for ‘rare earth’ (uranium) is likely about powering these sorts of cities, without needing to rely on a ‘countries’ power grid – to make them autonomous and impervious to local issues.

A few big military powers to allow for the “constant enemy” setup similar to 1984, with a corporate backend to prop up oligarchs that can act based on the whims of the oligarch without fear of repudiation.

Authoritarianism is on a big upswing lately, and egalitarian ideals are busy eating themselves alive – mired in demographic politics. And the conspiracy gremlin in me says it’s been intentional on the part of the democrats/progressive sorts, as they’re just as beholden to ‘rich’ authoritarian leaning tech people as the right wing/republican sorts.

Reddit’s seeing membership outflows resulting from their more draconian policies. Reddit boss restarts a competitor platform so that he can try and recapture users by owning his own competition, while trying to pretend like there’s no conflict.

idk. Seems pretty suspect to me. Lemmy seems ‘ok’ for news aggregation, and it has a more community / local vibe to it. For example, I can have more confidence that the feeds I see on Lemmy.ca are more controlled / accountable to Canadians, rather than the heavily Americanized subs that exist in Reddit. And I can pick and choose which other subs to see, with better understanding of the likely biases that I’ll encounter. This sort of end user transparency is really refreshing, especially given the burbling propaganda war being waged by the Americans at present against Canada.