Quotulatiousness

June 26, 2010

The smell of burning police cars

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 21:34

Just when you think the anarchists have decided to let the government look like fools, they pull stuff like this, allowing the security forces to justify the billion+ they’ve spent on the G8/G20 summit meetings:

Pic from Eric Squair.

Pic from Pete Forde. The second police car in this photo also gets the warm treatment from the anarchists.

For those not familiar with Toronto, this is approximately here:

Update: Michael Coren has a suggestion to get the police more involved in deterring the rioters:

An idea. Tell the cops that these anarchist criminals are actually confused, gentle Polish visitors trying to find help at an airport. Not only will deadly force ensue but the police will lie about it all after the fact.

Update, the second: Another burning police car, further east at (I assume) Queen King St. and Bay St.

Pic by Marissa Nelson.

Update, the third: In spite of all the images available of burning or burnt-out police vehicles, the three above were the only ones. Rarely have so many twittered so much about so few . . .

The ungentlemanly art of reporting

Filed under: Media, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:39

Paul Wells looks at the methods employed by now-famous reporter-to-the-generals Michael Hastings:

Hastings is blunt about the fun a reporter on short-term assignment can have when he doesn’t have to worry about the repercussions of what he writes. “My job was basically: Ride the buses and planes with the candidates, have big lunches and dinners on the expense account, get sources drunk and singing, then report back the behind-the-scenes story.”

Then there is this paragraph. The sentence with the bad word is the most interesting to me as it will be to you, but the whole paragraph, with its tensions and contradictions, is worth considering:

   The dance with staffers is a perilous one. You’re probably not going to get much, if any, one-on-one time with the candidate, which means your sources of information are the people who work for him. So you pretend to be friendly and nonthreatening, and over time you “build trust,” which everybody involved knows is an illusion. If the time comes, if your editor calls for it, you’re supposed to fuck them over; and they’ll throw you under a bus without much thought, too. (I should say that personal friendships can actually develop, despite the odds.) For the top campaign officials and operatives, seduction and punishment of reporters is an art. Write this fluff piece now; we’ll give you something good later. No, don’t write it this way, write it that way. We’ll give you something good later.

This deserves to stand as one of the great bits of journalistic self-flagellation and revelation, only a notch below Janet Malcolm’s famous confession that “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.”

H/T to Taylor Empire Airways for the link.

G20 arrests not considered “major enough” to release details

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:25

Siri Agrell notes the inconsistency of Toronto police over the (32 at time of writing) arrests made around the G20 area:

When asked for details of the arrest of a deaf man at Friday night’s demonstration, Burrows [of the Integrated Security Unit] said he had neither a name or the charges.

“Very rarely do we ever release information unless it’s a major arrest, major charges, big investigation or something like that,” he said. “That’s our standard practice. This guy was arrested last night, there’s nothing major about it. we’d never put a release out about that.”

And yet, the police regularly release information about minor incidents, ranging from lost property to suspicious behaviour. Surely, the arrest of Toronto citizens exercising their right to protest during a major international event warrents some transparency?

Yet another example of the police taking advantage of the situation to expand their practical reach?

So teenagers sending sext messages, a lost urn and some guy trying to pick up Toronto women are worthy of police updates, but details of arrests made during the G20, when police have been given huge powers, aren’t worth releasing?

In a nutshell, yes.

What other “secret laws” did they pass?

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:37

Much noise and confusion over the discovery of a recently passed law allowing police to arrest anyone who fails to show ID within 5 metres of a “public work”. The law itself isn’t new, but the secret was the silent addition of the area of the G20 meetings as a “public work” for the definition of that law. Hijinks ensue:

Police are now able to jail anyone who refuses to furnish identification and submit to a search while within five metres of a designated security zone in downtown Toronto.

Critics reacted furiously to the new rules, which remained unpublicized until Thursday when a 32 year-old man was arrested in Toronto for refusing to show ID to police.

New Democrat MPP Peter Kormos said Friday the provincial Liberals created a “Kafka-esque” situation where people could be arrested for violating rules they didn’t know existed.

“This is very very repugnant stuff and should be troubling to everybody,” he said.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) said it was “extremely concerned” that the new measures violate constitutional safeguards.

I’m not a fan of violent protests, but I don’t believe the police need this additional tool in order to arrest people who attempt to breach the barricades or attack other people: this is granting too much arbitrary power to police officers. The way the power was granted is even more disturbing . . . it shows that the government knew there’d be an outcry if they did it in the public view, so they arranged it so that nobody would know about it in time to do anything about it. Nice work, Ontario, got any other nasty legal surprises you want to spring on us?

Update, 29 June: According to a report in the National Post, the Ontario government denies that there was any such regulatory change and that no arrests were made using the authority of this act.

Was the “fake lake” outrage itself fake?

Filed under: Cancon, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:17

Andrew Coyne says we’ve all been faked out of our boots over the “fake lake” issue:

It’s not an “indoor lake,” as the first story I read suggested. It is a reflector pool, about the size of a backyard swimming pool, only no more than two inches deep. There can’t be more than 10 gallons of water in it, tops. It is bordered by a small wooden platform simulating a dock, with Muskoka chairs casually strewn about. There’s a bank of canoes on either side, and a large screen showing some quite breathtaking high-def footage of Canadian lakeland scenes. And that’s it.

It’s not extravagant in the slightest. Modest would be closer to the mark. The government puts the cost at about $57,000, which sounds about right: about what it would cost to finish your basement. Or to be precise, it represents just over two 100,000ths of one per cent of federal spending. All in all it’s rather a pleasant spot, a small oasis of calm and comfort away from the conference churn, and shows every sign of being a hit with the foreign press.

So either we all got hoodwinked over the vast cost and outright fakery, or they’ve brainwashed Andew Coyne!

Texas conservatives want to take you back

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:06

Take you back to the middle of the last century, or even further:

Texas Republicans are a conservative lot. Still, it’s difficult to imagine mainstream GOP voters demanding their neighbors be jailed for engaging in a little hanky-panky behind closed doors.

Nevertheless, the state’s Republican party has voted on a platform by which their candidates will stand, and it includes the reinstatement of laws banning sodomy: otherwise known as oral and anal sex.

The party’s platform also seeks to make gay marriage a felony offense, which may be confusing to most given that the state does not sanction or recognize same sex marriages, meaning any such ceremony conducted does not bear the weight of law. Whether this means the GOP wants gay couples married in other states to be pursued through Texas as dangerous criminals, the party did not specify.

“We oppose the legalization of sodomy,” the platform states. “We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy.”

Texas Republicans must be a much more sexually repressed bunch if all of this managed to pass muster with the party faithful. They also appear to be in an anti-immigrant frenzy, with measures custom-designed to alienate Spanish-speaking voters also passed as part of the platform.

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