Five major Canadian banks mysteriously go offline in hours-long outage

EDIT: Or in thinking about it further, it could have been thoughts of self preservation on the banks part. In order to keep a decent portion of their customer base from transferring their funds to "offshore" banks, of some sort, they simply closed their proverbial doors for a time, to let the panic die down.

The craziness is the specifics of certain conspiracy theories. For example the idea that covid itself is a conspiracy, or the there is a conspiracy to suppress ivermectin.

I have to agree with the view that outlandish conspiracy thinking isn't only wrong, it is actively dangerous and should be argued against strenuously. It was a large part of Nazi propaganda that motivated a genocide, so that is an existence proof of a danger associated with such unhinged thinking if it's allowed to go unchallenged in public discourse.

Anyone without a booster had their ability to participate in society "deactivated", like in a bad Science Fiction movie. What's more terrifying are the people who want to convince the rest of us that this should be normal and is not completely insane.

Jeffery Epstein (nothing in particular, just literally everything about him)

Gulf of Tonkin

MK Ultra

Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

And those are just the very obvious ones. I find that a Bayesian way of looking at the world tends to drive up the credibility of various "conspiracy theories" which would otherwise seem fairly unlikely.

I guess it depends on what the meaning of "force" is.

If to you "force" means a literal gun literally aimed at your head (not literally as in figuratively) then you're right, no force has been applied yet.

If to you "force" includes regulations and arm-twisting of employers and retailers to require employees and patrons to get vaccinated, then force most definitely has been applied. That force does involve figurative guns to people's heads. If the government decrees that employers must do X, employers will do X on pain of whatever the decree says (fines, cancellation of business licenses, etc.). Fines are backed by guns: if you scofflaw enough then you will end up in prison, and if you resist arrest you will end up roughed up or dead, as in the government's agents will rough you up and possibly kill you, and they'll use firearms in the process.

I.e., the threat of force is force.

The law recognizes this. "Assault with a deadly weapon" doesn't mean that the weapon was actually physically applied to the victim -- it means that de minimis a threat was made to apply it physically to the victim.

It's quite disingenuous to say that governments haven't forced anyone to get vaccinated. In many cases there are literally no laws requiring it, or requiring anyone to require it, but the impression given to the public, and to employers, retailers, etc., is very much that force is being threatened. Even if in the end there are no actual laws making it so, for the average person there might as well have been.

Back to assault with a deadly weapon, I doubt that using a realistic toy weapon would vitiate the charge. If the victim cannot trivially tell what that the deadly weapon isn't actually a deadly weapon, then the assault has to be considered as being with a deadly weapon. The same must be true for coercion with pretend-laws and decrees -- if the victims are led by their victimizers to believe that force is being threatened, then force is being threatened.

Lab leak, cloth masks being ineffective, Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction being made up, Vietnam war Gulf of Tonkin, Epstein Pedophile island. JFK multiple gun theory hasn't been proven but seems more likely than not.

These are all now generally accepted facts but were once considered conspiracy theories.

It surprises me that an adult (that presumably lives in the US) wouldn't be aware of at least some of these.

This is probably due to a lack of language skills on your part. Multiple countries are discussing it and it's de facto already required in France, for example.

The complaint this time isn't about the police using unnecessary force to brutalize the public. Our complaint is that they haven't upheld the law, and are acting like 'buddies' with the people that they are supposed to be ticketing/incarcerating.

We just want the police to do their fucking job.

He wasn't forced to do anything, it was his choice, against the wishes of many premiers.

Trudeau should have done what he did with the 2020 train blockade protests. Met with the protestors, had a dialogue about the issues (mandates) and come to a compromise conclusion.

The RCMP do have enforcement duties at the Alberta border crossing and BC border crossing, both now open.

Judging RCMP for the inactions of a useless Ottawa city police force is inaccurate and misleading.

Interesting. This is the first I've heard of that.

Discussion starts in Part V / Section 46 at https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/e-4.5/FullText.html