Blogging Change

Look! There's a guy in a black shirt and black hat shouting! OMG! He's asking angry questions about a large corporation! And who  knows what he has in that plastic bag or in that shoulder bag -- probably bombs! Quick, get the riot cops to the Eaton Center and start clubbing bystanders! …
[Read more...]

It’s been awhile since I’ve done a Saturday Nite Nostalgia edition, hasn’t it? And I’m a doin’ it on Wednesday to boot! After that terrible week and even much worse week-end in Toronto for Steve’s expensive photo op to push world leaders to yet another Great Depression (because, misery does love company), I think we can all use some comforting music. Ok, I can use it!  Besides, I have a feeling most won’t even know who Woody Guthrie even was.  Here is a bio of this legendary folk singer if you’re interested. I chose Woody Guthrie to comfort me this …
[Read more...]

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS EUROPE:STRIKES LEAD TO FURTHER CONFRONTATIONS IN EUROPE:General strikes in Greece and the Basque countries in Spain were generally successful the other day, and at least in Greece led to further confrontations with the police during the strikers' demonstrations. Meanwhile in Madrid an unlimited strike on the metro has led to confrontations with the police there as well. The Madrid strike is supported by all three of the Spanish anarchosyndicalist organizations, the CGT, the CNT and Solidaridad Obrera. According to Solidaridad Obrera who are particularly strong in the Madrid …
[Read more...]

Who picks up the phone? Here is an interesting photo essay from Mother Jones on phone sex operators. This woman reveals: I'm 60 years old, I have a BA in cultural anthropology from Columbia University, and I've been married for 25 years. I make twice the money I made in the corporate world. I work from home; the money transfers into my bank account daily. I'm Scheherazade: If I don't tell stories that fascinate the pasha, he will kill me in the morning. Another woman describes her worst experiences as a phone sex operator: Just last night I received possibly... …
[Read more...]

It looks and smells a lot like the ISU and anyone else invovled engineered the situation in Toronto to maximise the chance of mass arrests. They built enough detention cages and such to house a 1000 arrestees, finagled a secret law, lied to the public from the get go, and I'd be really surprised if there weren't agent provocateurs and riot facilitating restraint in order to maximise police justification for their later actions.It's probably safe to say that public trust in the police is compromised in the worst way.The Miami method police provocation is less likely to work next time, but I'm sure …
[Read more...]

Joe Warmington confirms what many suspected:As downtown Toronto witnessed burning police cars and a small group of thugs on a rampage, a police source tells me the only thing that stopped the officers from doing that was an order telling them not to. They tell me they could have rounded up all, or most of them, in no time.I have had several frontline police officers tell me they were told not to get involved. But even before that decision was made, says one insider, there was mass confusion and indecision."The orders went from engage to, no, don't engage to engage to, no, don't engage,' " said …
[Read more...]

Via Dawg..it just might be. Lemme see, crewcut, fit build, silent...be nice to get a closer look at those highspeed black boots he's wearing. Doesn't seem to be associated with or interacting with anyone around him, let alone dressed like them in his slick Gortex shell and new jeans. And I wonder what he seems to oh so directly go for when he opened the back door when everyone is milling about or curiously toying with the car... And to me ol' biased eyes, there's a look on his mug like he knows something the crowd doesn't. If I saw him on a flight, I'd be surprised if he didn't collect a duffle …
[Read more...]

Ignore the YouTube title: we don't know his identity or whether he is a police officer. But if you do know who he is, get in touch with A Creative Revolution.Note the woman in the crowd shouting "This isn't helping us." No kidding. …
[Read more...]

Everybody thought a police state wasn’t eminent?   It’s not enough to have some minimum wage flunkies gawking at a scan of your birthday suit before you embark on a big airplane, but  now, if Bill C-42, an insidious law Steve just put out before the closing out parliament (How conveeenient!!); the U.S. (ok, to be fair, applicable to any foreign nation) could and would have access to all info about passengers on board commercial flights merely flying above their airspace, without even landing on American soil.  It would mean that if we’re flying to to places like Cuba or France …
[Read more...]

Astute reader Craig draws our attention to one of the "weapons" seized by the Toronto Police this past weekend: a copy of "Upping the Anti," a radical journal that "provides a space to reflect on the state of political organizing in Canada."That's more like it, guys. My old copy of "The Little Red Book" could barely raise a welt. :)UPDATE: Co-blogger Balbulican, in the comments, takes a closer look at Collage #6: "I read the staple gun as a deft hommage from the Toronto police to the RCMP. Nice Dziekanski-esque touch." …
[Read more...]

A prediction: Chief Bill Blair's internal investigation will clear the Toronto Police of wrongdoing in the Amy Miller affair--indeed, of any wrongdoing at all. Remember, you read it here first.But it's not solely up to him any more. The case will, however, be a test of the efficacy of the Office of the Ontario Independent Police Review Director.I wish Miller, her journo colleagues and Director Gerry McNeilly good luck in penetrating the blue wall. It's the closest we're going to come, it seems, to a public inquiry.An interesting video has emerged of what appears to be a police officer posing …
[Read more...]

What what? Statistics Canada has quietly made major changes to the country's census in time for the forthcoming round of national sampling in 2011. The long census questionnaire that provided information on a broad range of topics such as ethnicity, education, employment, income, housing and disability has been eliminated. Instead, those questions will be asked on a new, voluntary National Household Survey (NHS) and the results will never be released, in contrast with the treasure trove of census data that become public after 92 years.First, some clarification on the 92 year figure. The …
[Read more...]

Ads like the video below got Paul Martin into trouble. With everything  Master Steve said in his hay days of Reform and NCC, the ad below was certainly a doozy and seemed far fetched, even for Harpercon standards back in the day. Match that with The sponsorship scandal gone viral, well…as Dave from the Galloping Beaver put it, if Nostradamus had put on that ad, he probably would have had more credibility. A few bloggers have been putting up the video since the G20 Police state of terror.  I hope more do this. That video should also serve as an ominous reminder of how putting the G20 summit …
[Read more...]

You can always trust a farmer. My family has been in Alberta for five generations–and a core thing that has been shown to me by my family is that the people of rural Alberta, the farmers and the ranchers, is that they can be trusted. Mind you, “trust” isn’t in the same vein as being [...] …
[Read more...]

Shorter Norman Spector: Ha, ha, Toronto totally deserved that.  Ha ha. …
[Read more...]

.Further to yesterday's revelation that Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair knew the so-called five meter rule did not give him extra powers to violate Charter rights comes the revelation that the rank and file police performing the above actions on peaceful demonstrators also knew it :By mid-afternoon Friday, [police spokesman Mark] Pugash said, police got new information informing them that, as both police and the province confirmed Tuesday, the regulation merely applied only to the area within the fence. Police sent out a bulletin to police officers, Mr. Pugash said, but did not see a need to tell …
[Read more...]

Dr. James Coplan,  a developmental pediatrician with four decades of experience with special needs children,  argues in Psychology Today that there is no increase in incidence of autism.  Dr. Coplan distinguishes between autism prevalence which he describes as rates of autism diagnosis and rates of autism incidence which he describes as rates of autism occurrence .  The essence of the Coplan autism epidemic denial has been heard before and is obviously partially correct. The  changes in diagnostic definitions of autism from the DSM-III to the DSM-IV have expanded dramatically …
[Read more...]

The G20 protest has found its Leni Riefenstahl. You might not be in the mood, in light of recent developments, to appreciate a video so clearly sympathetic to the police but this is nonetheless a beautiful and masterful piece of editing by Miguel Barbosa of Torenveda. That's him by the way yelling into his camera, " This is f*cked up." Found via Back of the Book.. …
[Read more...]

Update: 30/1445ZHurricane Alex has intensified slightly and is now well defined. Central pressure was measured at 961 millibars with an initial intensity of 70 knot (148 kmh/92 mph) winds at the surface.This thing is a behemoth. As you can see from the satellite shot taken less than an hour ago, Alex occupies a huge portion of the Gulf of Mexico.Alex has been upgraded to a Hurricane by the NHC. That makes it the first hurricane of the 2010 Atlantic season and the first June hurricane in that basin for 15 years. (Hurricane Allison)Alex will probably intensify before it makes landfall sometime Wednesday. …
[Read more...]

Break out the champagne! Chief Bill Blair admits to lying  to lying about that “five feet law” and that he was acting on his own without knowledge of the McGinty government–so he says. Toronto’s police chief is admitting there never was a five-metre rule that had people fearing arrest if they strayed too close to the G20 security perimeter. Civil libertarians were fuming after hearing Friday that the Ontario cabinet gave police the power to stop and search anyone coming within five metres of the G20 fences in Toronto for a one week period. However, the Ministry of Community …
[Read more...]

…
[Read more...]

My apologies to readers who might have been trying to leave comments this evening--they don't appear to "take." I've asked the wonderful Echo folks to do something about this: in the meanwhile, please rest assured that this is not due to any heavy-handedness on my part.UPDATE: Back in business. Fire away!UPPERDATE: Well, no. Very much on-again, off-again, and comments are being plucked from sub-threads and placed in main threads.Tell you what, gentle readers--I'm going back to work. Keep commenting by all means, though--it seems that they will appear, but only after quite a while.UPPESTDATE: Notice …
[Read more...]

CANADIAN POLITICS:SOLIDARITY RALLIES WITH G20 DETAINEES:As those arrested at the G20 protests are gradually being released or charged solidarity for their situation is growing across Canada. It may be that the federal Conservative government has made a grievous miscalculation in their plans, both in holding the summit in downtown Toronto which a majority of Canadians disapproved of, especially considering the cost, and then in authorizing the mass arrests that seemed targeted at everyone but the small group of rioters. Given the fact that the Canadian population was quite divided about the protests …
[Read more...]

I had a good rapport with Harvie over at Searching for Liberty but when I saw this I couldn't help but comment. But my comment got a little long so I gave it its own post.Original Post can be found hereLiberals: Touting "Evolution", Yet Ignoring Its LessonsBy R.G. HarvieIsn't it ironic, don't you think?Mention the theory of "intelligent design", and every liberal worth their salt will come flying out of their dark little caves in coffee shops and book stores and suddenly begin espousing Charles Darwin, and asserting themselves as experts on the "settled science" of Evolution.And from my own perspective, …
[Read more...]

Link: 'Inside the G20 Eastern Avenue Detention Centre' via BlogTO …
[Read more...]

Here we go.Gulf coast residents had feared a tropical storm. Monday's weather wasn't that bad, but it was bad enough to bring relief efforts on the water to a halt. Seven miles out to sea there were rolling seven-foot seas. It makes the skimming operations to recover oil much more difficult. Monday's foul weather also forced BP to delay plans of adding a third capturing system which would help the "Q-4000" and "Discover Enterprise" recover some of the 60,000 barrels of oil that continues to spew into the Gulf daily. For the armada of boats dealing with the spill, tropical storm Alex …
[Read more...]

...born June 18th. Ain't he just so handsome?!?I will soon be leaving for the Texas Hill Country to be with my daughter's family. Thus, officially announcing my extended internet break--in case anyone noticed! (In addition to my blog, I'm trying to take a hiatus from Facebook, Twitter, HuffPo, Politico and everything in between. EEeeeep! Rough stuff, indeed. ADDICTION IS SUCH A SORDID BUSINESS!!!!)Yall be nice and play fair. As the governor of California once said, I'll be back. …
[Read more...]

Not a police state? (Emphasis mine)Toronto's police chief is admitting there never was a five-metre rule that had people fearing arrest if they strayed too close to the G20 security perimeter. Civil libertarians were fuming after hearing Friday that the Ontario cabinet gave police the power to stop and search anyone coming within five metres of the G20 fences in Toronto for a one week period. However, the Ministry of Community Safety says all the cabinet did was update the law that governs entry to such things as court houses to include specific areas inside the G20 fences — not outside. …
[Read more...]

Is there anything about your conduct around the G8/G20 that doesn't amount to a fucking lie?----------------I had another thought in the wake of this post.Could police statements about not giving a damn about our rights, and the secret law passed to "limit" those rights, and lies from the Hogtown police chief on down be grounds for some sort of legal challenge or legitimate resistance to arrest?I am no lawyer, but it seems reasonable to me that in era of secret laws, police lies and abitrary detention and search, a private person might reasonably conclude that there could either be secret laws …
[Read more...]

Fire the liar:When asked Tuesday if there actually was a five-metre rule given the ministry's clarification, Chief Bill Blair smiled and said, “No, but I was trying to keep the criminals out.” Even though it wasn't accurate, the public was left to believe the province had given officers the power to demand identification and detain anyone with five-metres of the G20 site. All weekend there were reports of police stopping people throughout downtown Toronto — often in areas nowhere near the G20 zone — demanding identification and to search bags and backpacks.UPDATE: Unlike my friend …
[Read more...]

Gil Scott-Heron wrote the celebrated, militant poem "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." The title, which has become a popular mantra, means that thinking is paramount and, unfortunately, not a common practice. Featured on his 1971 album, "Pieces of Man," the lyrical poem describes how media transformed into a medium that keeps individuals, especially African Americans, from thinking. Although Scott-Heron’s piece focused on television, his concept also applies to radio. As a child growing up in Memphis, music was one of the most socially responsible mediums for communication, political and …
[Read more...]

The US National Hurricane Center has now issued Hurricane Warnings on Tropical Storm Alex for the south coast of Texas and northeast coast of Mexico. Alex is gaining strength and will probably develop into a Hurricane by no later than tomorrow and make landfall on Wednesday night.The wind shear is a little high but its forecast track takes it through decreasing shear in the next few hours. Sea surface temps are very high and the central pressure has dropped to 982 mb. It is moving North Northwest at 10 knots (12 mph/19 kmh).As it stands now, Alex will have very little direct impact on the oil blowout …
[Read more...]

Go read.The first thing I learned is that we do not have a right to peaceful protest in this country. I have always believed we do, but it’s not, ultimately, true. …
[Read more...]

It appears I may owe Dalton McGuinty an apology (maybe [Update: yet, Dawg has a point]):Toronto's police chief is admitting there never was a five-metre rule that had people fearing arrest if they strayed too close to the G20 security perimeter.Civil libertarians were fuming after hearing Friday that the Ontario cabinet gave police the power to stop and search anyone coming within five metres of the G20 fences in Toronto for a one week period.However, the Ministry of Community Safety says all the cabinet did was update the law that governs entry to such things as court houses to include specific …
[Read more...]

HUMOUR:THE PASSING OF BLAME: …
[Read more...]

Their thoughts: Graham Thomson of the Edmonton Journal paints a harsh picture of the Wildrose AGM. Rick Bell is, well, Rick Bell. The Calgary Herald tries to give a positive spin on the Wildrose ditching their values for electoral success. There is now an open revolt in the comment area of the page reacting the [...] …
[Read more...]

Further to yesterday’s post about what some women have endured at the hands of police while detained by Toronto’s horrific police force during the G20 demos in Toronto, here is a compendium of links put together by my friend, Pete Garden, who runs Turning the Tide Bookstore in Saskatoon. Dear friends, fellow community members and supporters of Turning the Tide Bookstore, As many of you know, 20 of the most powerful people in the world and their respective entourages gathered in Toronto and Huntsville, Ontario for the G8/G20 meetings. Protecting them was a $1 billion dollar security …
[Read more...]

had had months, not days, to play with their female victims...[T]he pale-skinned, brown-haired girl—half Croat, half Muslim—spoke of being imprisoned with her mother and two dozen other women in the basement of a municipal hall in her home town of Teslic, in north-central Bosnia. Her jailers, Bosnian Serb irregulars, raped her and the others and forced them to have sex with uniformed Bosnian Serb troops deploying through the area. She and her mother each had to watch as the other was gang-raped …
[Read more...]