boo-frickin'-hoo

If "Officer Bubbles" really wants to put an end to the shame and embarrassment he suffered as a result of his idiotic actions at the G20 being widely publicized, he might want to chose a different tack. After all, is getting  yourself saddled with the nickname "Constable Crybaby" really going to make things better? I'm sure this will make the other guys and gals in the squad room stop teasing him.

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Do we still have the right not to have confessions beaten out of us?

Seriously, because if we don't have right to have a non-police witness of some kind present at our interrogation by the police, then in practice the cops pretty much have carte blanche to do whatever they want to people. Without a right to a lawyer during interrogation, who knows how many people will "fall down the stairs" while in custody.

I just moved back to Canada from Japan and while I love the Japanese culture and people and all my friends there, civil liberties in Japan are something of a bad joke. The court system has a conviction rate of nearly 100% for a couple of reasons. First, many criminals turn themselves in due to the shame-based nature of the social contract in Japanese culture. Second, there is no real presumption of innocence in the legal system. Third, the police can arrest and hold people without charge for days and the people being held have no right to a lawyer during interrogation.

In theory, this allows the police to avoid those cases where some crook gets off on a "technicality" because he wasn't read his rights or because he lawyered up and was told to act in his own best interest instead of the best interest of the state. In practice it means that when a crime is committed and the culprit isn't giftwrapped and waiting for them, the police in Japan can pick up anyone they consider undesirable, hold them incommunicado for a couple of days pending charges and give them the phone-book-and-rubber-hose treatment until they decide to confess. Usually, it doesn't even take any physical abuse. Three or four days without sleep, a complete ignorance of the rules the game is being played by and constant browbeating is usually enough to get the average homeless person or teen slacker to confess to whatever petty crime the police want them to in Japan. For more serious cases, the police can hold someone for a few weeks. After a couple of weeks, most people would be willing to confess to the McKinley assasination. And any accusations of mistreatment invariably boil down to "who are you going to believe - us, the sworn officers of the law who protect you while you sleep, or this whining criminal scumbag?"

The supreme court ruling sends us down the path to exactly that reality.

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They probably would have arrested Don Ho, too

"If that bubble touches me, you're going to be arrested for assault"

-Constable A. Josephs, Toronto Police 

 Go see the video at A Creative Revolution, a blog that rocks, bubbles or no bubbles


Dear Constable A. Josephs of the Toronto Police,

You are such a dick.

Respectfully,

Rev. Paperboy

Let me be perfectly clear

A few commenters and correspondents have accused me of supporting or at least giving aid and comfort to the Black Bloc Anarchist protesters who grabbed so much attention in Toronto during the G20 summit. Such accusations are, to use the mot juste "crap." My parents raised me much better than that.

I am most certainly NOT defending the brain-dead attention whores in the so-called Black Bloc, I think  they are childish tantrum-throwing clowns. I am criticizing the ham-fisted police response to them, which is not the same thing.
As far as I can see the police played right into the hands of this tiny group of dingbats in Toronto by letting them run wild on Saturday smashing windows and giving them patrol cars to burn and then turned around let the frustrated riot cops off the leash to arrest and even beat innocent peaceful protesters. Entire blocks were surrounded by the police in a strategy called "kettling" in which they seal off an area and arrest everyone in it, protesters, reporters, residents - anyone and everyone on the street. This is a violation of the constitution. Add to that the Ontario government passing last minute laws of dubious constitutionality, in secret no less, and the Toronto police chief adding his own illegal addendums and lying about what the law allowed his officers to do and you a have the results of the G20 on Canada. Previous use of agent provocateurs by the police, such at the Montebello summit two summers ago, have lead to a situation where anytime the there is violence of this nature at a major event, there will always be some question of whether the police were involved. Public trust in the police has been drastically eroded, and not without cause.  And THAT is what the anarchists really want.
In that sense, the Black Bloc were very successful. The police - who bragged they had infiltrated the group prior to the summit - did nothing to stop them, but fueled their antics by giving them free rein on Saturday and then used the damage they could have and should have stopped to justify an unconstitutional, heavy-handed response the rest of the weekend and as an object lesson to defend the ridiculous amount of money spent on security.
For the most part the television media lapped it up--pictures of burning police cars were all over the news and no one initially questioned any statement the police made.
One of your favorite journalists, Christie Blatchford, has been pushing this emotional story from Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair about how the black bloc protesters disrupted the repatriation ceremony in Toronto for a Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan. Except that video taken at the event shows absolutely no indication of any kind of disruption occurring. This further erodes the credibilty of both the police and the mainstream press -- another win for the forces of stupid black bloc anarchist wannabe revolutionaries.
I am not a fan of the black bloc hooligans by any means at all. I think they are dangerous, have no agenda except breaking the system and offer no alternatives. Mostly, I think they are bunch of self-important grandstanding assholes and petty vandals. They consider themselves revolutionaries and  the job of a revolutionary is to provoke a response by the state, to get them to crack down on the population and thereby provoke antigovernment sentiment and expand support for the revolution. This only works if the state panics and gives the revolutionaries what the want by cracking down and pissing people off -- and that is what happened in Toronto this weekend.

If the cops had just done their job instead of playing PR and political games to serve their own ends, there would be about 50 of the Black Bloc  in jail for variations on the charge of aggravated jackassery, most of them with scrapes and bruises, the rest of the weekend would have gone smoothly and we'd be talking about how badly the government overspent on the summits. Instead, the police and government have sowed the seeds of increasing public distrust in authority and undermined the foundations of civil society--which is just what the Block Bloc wants.

Because it has done such great things for American politics

It is unavoidable. Soon there will be a Fox News North based around the Sun newspaper chain. Goodbye reasonable discourse, nice knowing you.
Let be clear here - this is not going to be a channel dedicated to reasoned, objective journalism from a conservative perspective, this is going to be the television version of the Blogging Tories. The former press flak for the sitting PM will be running the network --- anyone care to place bets on how long it is before Michael Coren has a show? Or whether such august personages as Kathy Shaide are regular commentators?
It isn't as if Canada didn't already have a couple of conservative networks - how about CTV or Global? Hell even the eeeeevil liburl CBC gives regular airtime to Rex Murphy and Kory Teneycke. And this isn't a matter of people being able to pick and choose what channels they get at home -- they are applying for a "must carry" licence. Imagine the screeching that would ensue if the Playboy channel or some other kind of  porn network applied for a "must carry" licence that meant it would be seen in most Canadian homes. And make no mistake, this is going to be ideological porn, and it will have the same kind of effect that all porn has: It will arouse and excite by pandering to base instincts, while at the same time desensitizing viewers to non-mainstream content, pushing them to crave more extreme content to get their jollies.
Five years from now, when you wonder how in the hell the network that is screening "Alberta Uber Alles with Ralph Klein" or "Honky Night in Canada with Ezra Levant" ever got a licence, remember the  "freedom of speech" arguments that are being made now, and shed a tear for those well-meaning bloggers as Canada's Lowest Common Dominatrix Kate McMillan reads out their addresses on the air and urges her hordes of flying monkeys into action.

Boys and their toys

As mentioned below, the Canadian government is spending over a billion dollars on security for the upcoming Group of Eight and Group of Twenty summit dog-and-pony shows. This is more than five times the original estimate and dwarfs the amounts spent on similar summits in London (April 2009 $30 million) and Pittsburgh (Sept. 2009 -$18 million) both of which dealt with more protesters than can probably be expected in "Toronto the Good" 
Some of the money has gone on shiny new toys for the RCMP, OPP and Toronto Police riot squads, crowd control units and motorcade cops as well as the usual close protection bodyguard types, though naturally all the world leaders will be bringing their own sizable security details. 
About a million dollars has been spent to buy the Toronto Police four "sound notifiers" aka sonic cannons capable of producing sound pressure/ decibel levels about the same as standing behind a 747 when it revs its jets. This isn't just a loud public address system, it is a weapon that causes extreme pain and permanent hearing damage. 
Of course that leaves about another $1,099,000,000 for police y, new horses and motorcycles, riot gear, pepper spray, tasers, and lots and lots of "consulting fees" for "security experts" and plenty of contracts for private security firms. I bet this guy doesn't get any of it. 
In fact, it is so much money that they could have simply paid every man, woman and child in the entire province of Ontario about $95 just to stay home for those two weekends and still have had enough to provide a similar level of security to the Pittsburgh summit. Or they could have paid everyone in the Greater Toronto Area about $200 to spend the weekend out of town. If that seems like overkill, we could strictly limit it to Metro Toronto, give all 2.48 million residents $400 and still have more than three times as much as they spent on the London summit to buy coffee and donuts for the Toronto cops. 
In addition to the gratuitous skimming and graft bookkeeping problems, my real worry is that you can't give the boys their toys and not expect them to play with them. As we've seen numerous times since the needless pepper-spraying of demonstrators at the 1997 APEC summit to the over-reaction of police at Queen's Park in Toronto in 2000, in New York at the 2004 Republican Convention and at the Minnesota 2008 Republican Convention, if you bring in enough riot cops, you are going to have a riot. Even if the cops have to try to start it themselves.

"Paging Vice Principal B. Brother, please report to room 101"

Pennsylvania's Lower Merion School Board's efforts to give every one of its high school students a laptop computer are doubleplusgood!

A Lower Merion family has set off a furor among students, parents, and civil liberties groups by alleging that Harriton High School officials used a webcam on a school-issued laptop to spy on their 15-year-old son at home.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court, the family said the school's assistant principal had confronted their son, told him he had "engaged in improper behavior in [his] home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in [his] personal laptop issued by the school district."
The suit contends the Lower Merion School District, one of the most prosperous and highest-achieving in the state, had the ability to turn on students' webcams and illegally invade their privacy.

According to Philly.com, which is all over the story, this would not only be possible, but easy for the school board to do. The feds have gotten involved and felt the accusations were credible enough that they have subpoenaed school board documents and are investigating.

Setting aside the technological issues involved here, I have to wonder why the school thinks it has the right to regulate what a student does at home. Frankly, it is none of the school's business whether the student was shooting heroin, having bondage sex with goats or reading Ayn Rand aloud to his hamster while wearing nothing but swim fins and bacon grease-- he wasn't on school property, it wasn't during a school-supervised activity and there is no accusation that he was using the school-owned computer for an inappropriate activity like hacking or say, oh I dunno...spying on school board officials or his vice-principal.

Whether they were conducting completely illegal surveillance of this kid is separate matter. It doesn't really matter whether the information about the kid's activities outside school comes from a hidden camera, a nosy teacher or another student who is ratting him out - if it doesn't happen at school and it doesn't involve child abuse or a murder plot, it is none of the school's damned business what kid is doing and they have no right to discipline him for things that are not related to school.

As for the spying, where to start? If the school is doing this, it is so obviously, clearly wrong I can't imagine the kind of authoritarian protofascist numbskulls that are in charge and would sign off on this kind of program. A whole bunch of people should not only lose their jobs, but should end up in jail. Even prison inmates aren't under hidden video surveillance.

And just as an observation on the tendency of school administration not to pay much attention to things they are trying to teach in the classroom; While Orwell's "1984" was taught as part of the English curriculum and required reading for the students, clearly the officials either hadn't read it or had a sick sense of humor. The detention room at both my old high school in Ancaster, Ontario and the one attended by several friends in Sault Ste. Marie was room No. 101.

Crossposted from The Woodshed, where we also have the King of Morningside interviewing the High Priest of Gonzo.

Stay Klassy Kate

Kate McVillan of Small-minded Roadkill has apparently clutched her pearls in a swoon at the incivilitiy of those of us on the left who took issue with her celebration of journalists dying on the job. She hasn't come after me, because I'm small enought to pass unnoticed in the larger scheme of things, but she has loosed her flying monkeys on some other blogs. In particular, she seems to be stamping her little jackboots in the direction of the esteemed Dr. Dawg. When she didn't get the retraction she demanded, she had this to say in an email reproduced by the good doctor:

I have to say I now wonder why anyone on the right gave you so much as a passing snort when your wife passed away. I know I certainly regret it now. I had assumed you were a human being.

Stay klassy, KKKate.

Canada's Lowest Common Denominatrix (tm PSA) apparently took offense to this post by Dr. Dawg in which he pointed to his own noting of McVillian's at the very least tacit, if not effusive approval of the deaths of dozens of journalists over the past year in the context of talking about the right wing fascist cult of death. While KKKate said little enough herself in her post, the comments that she let stand are illustrative of just how deep a sinkhole her blog is and give a general picture of the kind of people who hang out there, lapping up her every word.

I wish I'd bought the T-shirt:
"Journalist. Rope. Tree. Some assembly required."

Posted by: Jim at December 19, 2009 8:02 AM

Well darn. I thought I was linking to a story about something bad happening.What's that old saying..I'd rather have a mother as a whore then a journalist?

Posted by: Justthinkin at December 19, 2009 8:05 AM

I've said for years the only way to save the US is to hang all of the media first. Looks like my views aren't so out of the main stream.
"Freedom of the press requires you support it, not subvert it."
When your group works to subvert our freedoms (speech, guns, property rights, etc) don't be surprised if we wouldn't like to see you pay for it.

Posted by: paulcr39 at December 19,2009 8:11 AM

It isn't a pretty picture and it goes a long way to explaining why Canada has strayed so far into the weeds in the last few years.

Is Tampa the new Ft. Sumter?

I guess Glenn Beck did his "oh please don't commit any of the violence I've been urging you to commit for the last year" ass-covering episode just in time.

What was intended to be a town hall discussion on President Barack Obama's health care reform proposal dissolved into a shouting match with shoving and scuffles in Ybor City tonight.
The event brought home to Tampa the recent phenomenon of angry opponents of Obama's proposal disrupting town hall meetings by Democratic members of Congress during the August recess.
This meeting was organized by Democratic state Rep. Betty Reed but was to include comments on the proposal by U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, a strong supporter.
Castor tried to speak for nearly 15 minutes but the crowd drowned her out, chanting, "You work for us,'' "Tyranny, tyranny,'' and "Read the bill." She ultimately left the meeting early, further angering some attendees.
The problems began when a crowd of around 500, many of them recruited to attend by interest groups both for and against the proposal, sought to enter the meeting room. The room, in the offices of the Hillsborough County Children's Board on East Palm Avenue, has a capacity of only about 250.
Several hundred people, mostly opponents, wound up outside or packing a hallway leading into the meeting room. Some scuffled with members of the sponsoring groups who manned the doorway.

The story is a bit misleading in that it blames both sides for the near riot. One group of people came there to discuss health policy and here from their elected representative, many at the behest of the their preferred political party or political action group. The other group was there strictly to shout slogans, disrupt the meeting and prevent reasonable discussion at the behest of those with a vested interest or for political advantage. There is no question as to which group is associated with which political party and blaming both sides is like blaming the bank and the bank robbers.

Not that Beck is the only one to blame, there is plenty of blame to go around.

Mahablog rounds up the usual suspects. One of several groups recruiting and busing people to break up meetings is "American's For Prosperity" - a nasty little conservative mouthpiece for hire group that Desmog blog ran across when they were trying to argue that global warming was a hoax.

Obviously the plutocrats are either worried or getting so overconfident that they cannot be touched, that they aren't even bothering to wipe the fingerprints off the weapons they are using to murder democracy in the United States.

This isn't the first time the right has used mob tactics in recent history, but this time it was regular people inspired by the same hatemongers and professional manipulators behind the "tea-bagger" movement, not a crowd of political aides and party operatives.

In encouraging people to come out and disrupt politcal meetings, a very dangerous line has been crossed here. Is American headed back to the pitched street battles of the early 20th century when the industrial barons of the day hired goons squads to attack and kill trade unionists, break up leftist demonstrations and nearly mounted a military coup?

Big darkness, soon come.

(cross-posted from the Woodshed)

Hoisting the white flag. The "terrorists" win.

Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber -- a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

George Walker Bush
President of the United States of America
Address to a Joint Session of Congess and the People of the United States
September 20, 2001

So, instead of pushing those freedoms to the front of the field of view, better to crush them and give the "terrorists" nothing to hate. Right?

Can Americans really be said to have rights any longer? When you can be arrested for having an opinion and saying it out loud, how is that an actual democracy?

Chet Scoville
September 1, 2008

Watch it and weep.

A shining city on a hill

Where if someone in authority doesn't like the way you look, you can disappear. Civil rights? Buddy, you ain't got no civil rights. In fact, according to our records, you don't even exist.
Italy in the 1930's? Germany in the 1940's? Argentina in the 1970's? ---Nope, the United States of America, now.
"But wait," you say "this only applies to suspected terrorists, you know--bad guys."
"Yeah" says I, "and who knows how one might become suspected of being a bad guy?"

crossposted from the Woodshed

Taking the "Pal" out of "Principal"

Even here in conformity-and-decorum land, where teachers get fired for not singing the old militarist national anthem, even in the old Soviet Union, they would never dream of something like this: Cheer out loud at a graduation - get arrested. Clearly, some people really, really need to show they are in charge. Educators often complain that people like high-school principals are unfairly stereotyped as mean-spirited, petty tyrants -- I wonder where that stereotype comes from?

"You can't bring the Constitution in here, this is the National Archives"

It may come as a surprise to some that the Constitution of the United States now no longer applies within government buildings or to government employees or to those in close proximity to government employees.

"Impeach Bush" t-shirt wearers forced to leave National
Archives Constitution Display in DC"

(snip)

"It was when I got to the Constitution that a security woman said to me, 'Miss, you need to go see that man over there.' I asked why. She said it was because of my t-shirt. I asked, 'Why my t-shirt?' She simply responded that I couldn't wear it in the building. At this point the big, burly security guard that she wanted me to go to, approached me.
"I said, 'What happened to the First Amendment?' The security woman told me to lower my voice. I raised my voice. Susan from Code Pink came over and offered me a jacket to cover my shirt, and I stayed."
Suzanne Haviland reported that a guard told her, "The reason I'm stopping you is that you are wearing something that criticizes the President. I'm a federal employee, and I'm not allowed to criticize the President."

(snip)

Even with a 180 degree change of direction in governement philosophy in the United States, it is going to take decades to get the shit stains out of the Constitution. It isn't like you can just send a 200 year old document out to be dry cleaned.

crossposted from the Woodshed