Quotulatiousness

June 28, 2010

Running with the nihilists

Filed under: Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

Tony Keller walked with the main union-led protest marchers on Saturday, pointing out that there was no single, unifying principle — it was a “grievance smorgasbord, an all-you-can-eat buffet of complaints, and apparently anyone protesting anything — anything — was invited”. What interested him the most, however, were the “hobbits”:

Standing in front of Cafe Lettieri, which was still open and doing a booming business even as protesters were packed so tightly outside that they pressed up against its windows, I heard someone to my right say, “Black Bloc, meet up on Queen!”

I turned to see six hobbits in black hoodies shuffling past me. It was on. Whatever “it” was going to be.

[. . .]

And then the non-peaceful part of our program started. The crowd suddenly began to surge away from the police lines at Spadina and Richmond, and back onto Queen Street. We were now heading east, violently following the route the non-violent march had just taken. A mass of maybe 100 people in black hoodies and balaclavas was moving at almost a run, accompanied by several hundred journalists and riot tourists. Occasionally someone would dart out from the group to smash a window or spray paint a slogan: “Against Police Against Prisons,” “F– the Police,” “F- Corporate Rule.”

[. . .]

The hoodie people weren’t just small in number, they were also small in stature. A lot of skinny white boys. And white women. (Some skinny, some really not). They looked like the kind of people who spend a lot of time playing video games in their parents’ basements. Or the graduating class of an art college. They were not marauding toughs. More like marauding geeks. Geeks marauding in a spontaneous yet carefully choreographed manner.

There’s a point in most peoples’ lives when getting out and protesting seems like such a good idea. And then you graduate and get a job . . .

June 27, 2010

The stars were aligned for ugliness

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:39

Peter Kuitenbrouwer enumerates the reasons why the violence this weekend was pretty much inevitable:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has something to answer for tonight. It is hard for this writer to escape the feeling that this summit was designed with every possible star aligned for ugliness to occur. The summit is held on a summer weekend, after university and high school exams are over; all the students are out and free and have time on their hands. Summer weather is perfect for a march. The summit takes place in the heart of Toronto: everybody in Canada has a friend in Toronto where they can stay during a protest.

And can we not say that assembling the greatest number of police in one spot in the history of Canada, and spending more on fences and security than Canada has ever spent before, has a provocative effect?

Why didn’t they keep both summits in Huntsville? Or, as several people have pointed out, at a remote Canadian Forces base where air transport and physical security are already in place?

Update: Jonathan Kay thinks the media and the echo chamber of Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and instant messaging combine to make a few incidents appear far bigger and more scary than they really are:

This is one of those stories the social media has gotten wrong: a million tweeters all tweeting up the same three burning police cruisers and few dozen wrecked storefronts. The number of protestors wasn’t even that big (even if the media insists on calling the protests “massive.”) The estimate I’ve seen thrown around is about 10,000. To put that figure in perspective, the number of protestors who swarmed Quebec City at the Summit of the Americas in 2001 was approximately 100,000 — tens times as large.

[. . .]

As I approached the intersection of Queen and Spadina, I could see a rowdy crowd of several thousand gathered. There were a few earnest placards in evidence (“Mother earth convenes the G-6billion. Fuck the G20″). But mostly, it was just excited-looking teenagers surrounding the cop car, like hyenas around their kill. In that moment, it looked like things were about to get truly ugly. I began eying the stores lining Queen, trying to predict which one would get trashed first.

But then came the sirens, and the atmosphere changed very quickly. From down Queen Street, headed eastbound, a speeding convoy of unmarked white busses stopped outside the Silver Snail comic store, and out poured police in full riot gear — helmets, batons, body armor. From an accompanying black suburban came a few even more serious-looking fellows, including at least one with a military-style assault rifle. They never said a word, never issued a threat, never fired any of their crowd-control weapons. They just advanced, in a line, several officers deep, toward the heart of Spadina and Queen. There wasn’t any violence — at least none that I saw. The worst I witnessed was a single protestor who threw a bottle from amidst the anonymity of the crowd, which gained a few oohs and ahs after it fell harmlessly on the concrete.

QotD: Toronto Saturday Night, G20 edition

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:16

You can walk a block or two from the action and Toronto is seen carrying on as normal. It’s not quite dangerous, but it’s not quite safe. The crowds are a mix of the indignant, the earnest and the opportunistic. Some obviously carry bad intentions. A lot seem simply bored. When the lights went out in 2003 and order unravelled slightly, Toronto turned into a party. Tonight, again, people are out in the streets, but the mood is simply dumb.

Aaron Wherry, “Toronto, tonight”, Macleans, 2010-06-26

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 . . .

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.

June 25, 2010

QotD: The danger of electing real libertarians

Filed under: Humour, Liberty, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:35

I don’t know what it is, but when you go all the way down the libertarian path, it leads to complete insanity. Just look at Ron Paul followers — they’re pretend-to-be-Spock-and-bite-each-other crazy. The libertarian philosophy seems reasonable enough, but it somehow always leads to candidates who accidentally dye themselves blue or carry around a pet ferret named Gustav.

So anyway, let’s definitely get someone in 2012 sympathetic to libertarian ideals who is adamantly against fiscal irresponsibility and government expansion — and for individualism — but if any candidates start foaming at the mouth, screaming “FIAT MONEY!!!!!”, back away and don’t make eye contact. Still, pure libertarians have a place in the GOP, but they’re sort of like Murdoch to the Republican A-Team: They keep breaking him out of the insane asylum because he’s useful for certain situations, but they’re not going to put him in charge of anything. Or there will be much fool pitying.

Frank J. Fleming, “Libertarians and the Republican Party”, IMAO 2010-06-25

The most honest political ad

Filed under: Humour, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:02

H/T to Terry Teachout.

June 24, 2010

The unhinged are now running Spanish “green” tech companies

Filed under: Environment, Europe, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 18:12

As I read this, I kept hoping that it’d be fake:

Spain’s Dr. Gabriel Calzada — the author of a damning study concluding that Spain’s “green jobs” energy program has been a catastrophic economic failure — was mailed a dismantled bomb on Tuesday by solar energy company Thermotechnic.

Says Calzada:

Before opening it, I called [Thermotechnic] to know what was inside … they answered, it was their answer to my energy pieces.

Dr. Calzada contacted a terrorism expert to handle the package. The expert first performed a scan of the package, then opened it in front of a journalist, Dr. Calzada, and a private security expert.

The terrorism consultant said he had seen this before:

This time you receive unconnected pieces. Next time it can explode in your hands.

Dr. Calzada added:

[The terrorism expert] told me that this was a warning.

I have no idea what Spanish law says about this kind of blatant intimidation, but I hope there are charges laid and convictions resulting from those charges.

Spain, of course, recently announced that they were having to cut back on their plans to become the greenest country in Europe, as they couldn’t afford the additional costs, both up-front and in lost opportunities in other industries.

H/T to Ace for the link.

Update, 25 June: In the comments, Ed Darrell says I’ve been taken in and has a long post up with translations of the original article used by Ace and PajamasMedia: here. If Ed is right and I’ve been taken in, I’ll post a retraction. I’m sure he’ll do the same if it turns out to be true.

Update, 28 June: A clarification posted at Ace of Spades HQ makes it seem a bit less like a mock-bomb threat.

The Green company sending the package apparently had its actual package — a report — swapped with car parts at some point in the mailing. [. . .]

It didn’t look like, or feel like, a letter or report, so at that point Calzada got a security guard to scan it — and what was inside was a cylindrical object with wires attached. At that point, the security guard got an expert to examine it, with others in attendance. The contents were a container for diesel of some sort, and some other parts. The expert saw this as a bomb threat, based on a pattern used by, eg., ETA: “This one is a hoax bomb. The next one might not be.”

It’s a “Failure of its systems for monitoring”

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Greece, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:45

Austin Bay thinks he’s identified the elephant in the European parlour:

Greece teeters on the edge. The Wall Street Journal‘s Paul Hannon wrote this week that “the failure of its (EU) systems for monitoring and controlling build-ups in government debt” are why the bailout loans given to Greece by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and fiscally disciplined EU members like Germany became necessary.

He’s right. “Failure of its systems for monitoring,” however, is a euphemism — economic diplo-speak for a very difficult word: corruption. Greek governments cooked the books (its actual deficit is twice as high as officially reported), violated fiscal agreements and borrowed money they could not repay.

Corruption lies at the dirty core of the Euro-zone’s trouble. Governmental corruption and its cohort, illicit business practices, are a pervasive, multicultural, global affliction.

Corruption coupled with systemic lack of accountability — to include personal accountability, where managers and workers let lackadaisical and lazy work practices slide — eventually produces more than anger, cynicism and financial turmoil. Even among economies in the developed world, it stunts economic productivity, robs the future and sows the seeds of armed conflict. In the developing world it undermines aid efforts, manacles fragile economies and as a result condemns millions to poverty.

The big remaining question is no longer “Will the Euro fail?” but rather “Who’ll bail out first?”

Australia changes PM

Filed under: Australia, Politics, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:05

I hadn’t realized just how unpopular Kevin Rudd had become:

Although he scored a landslide election victory against an 11-year-old Liberal government led by John Howard in November 2007, he had said he was confident he would win the challenge. But commentators were already writing him off. “He’s a goner. You can stick a fork in him,” Nick Economou of Monash University told Reuters.

For Rudd, the transformation in his political fortunes has been startling. Only six months ago, with the opposition going through its third leadership change since he beat Howard, Rudd and his government seemed untouchable.

A year ago he rivalled Bob Hawke as Australia’s most popular prime minister. Now he will join Hawke as the only other Labor prime minister to be dumped by his party, making him the first one-term prime minister since 1932.

The new prime minister is Julia Gillard, who appears to be facing the kind of challenge that the first female prime minister of Canada faced: being held responsible for the sins of the last leader (Kim Campbell led the Progressive Conservatives into their worst election defeat ever, dropping from holding a decisive majority to only 2 seats).

Update: The Register thinks that one of the first changes Gillard will make is to fire the current Communications Minister:

Speculation was rife this morning (or evening, over in Australia) that controversial Communications Minister and architect of Australia’s great firewall project, Stephen Conroy may shortly be for the chop.

In his place, it is suggested, Australia’s new PM Julia Gillard might prefer the more conciliatory — and also better-informed — approach of Senator Kate Lundy.

If so, this is likely to prove a victory for those opposed to Conroy’s hard line on internet censorship, as Ms Lundy has made it clear over the last few months that she prefers to win support from Australia’s voters for an opt-in filter — instead of imposing a mandatory filter from the centre, which is the hardline stance favoured by the present Communications Minister.

If true, that will be a bit of good news for internet users in Australia.

June 22, 2010

QotD: He bestrides the G8 like a Colossus

Filed under: Cancon, France, Germany, Italy, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:07

. . . things are pretty bad in the mother country when a self-described “Whig” calls Stephen Harper “a magnificent fiscal conservative.” It’s like calling Gordon Brown “a brilliant and charismatic leader,” or Jean Chretien “a visionary and articulate statesman.” In politics, at least practical politics, all truth is relative.

Compared to most G8 leaders Stephen Harper does look like a genius. This is, as you’ve guessed, damning by the faintest of praise. Barack Obama is an avowed socialist, who described his one real job in the private sector as working “behind enemy lines.” Japan has been governed by a series of interchangeable non-entities for the better part of the last decade. In most of Europe, and certainly the English speaking world, Silvio Berlusconi would be awaiting sentencing. Angela Merkel rivals Helmut Schmidt in the visionary department. Sarko is a living embodiment of every mistake the French have made since Diem Bien Phu: A domestic policy summed up by the quintessentially French term “dirigiste,” and a foreign policy consisting of German guilty tripping and sophomore anti-Americanism. If Stephen Harper looks taller than others, it is because he is standing on the shoulders of midgets.

Publius, “Well, at least someone likes him…”, Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2010-06-21

June 17, 2010

Get in on Cap & Trade now!

Filed under: Environment, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:09

If you were hesitating about whether to get involved in Cap and Trade, hesitate no longer:

I have become a convert on the Cap And Trade thing. I am all in; pedal to the metal; go for broke; shoot the moon; a true fracking believer now.

This C&T shit has more revenue generating potential than prohibition ever did. You’ll generally be dealing with a better class of people who aren’t as inclined to settle their differences with machine guns, which is a big plus. Another big advantage over bootlegging is there’s no actual product involved, so all the usual logistics and end point sales issues involved with smuggling vanish.

It is truly a beautiful beautiful thing; even better than selling lots on the moon or mars, because the government doesn’t force people to buy real estate on the moon and mars.

If Al Capone were alive today, he’d be a carbon trader.

June 11, 2010

What could possibly go wrong?

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:30

The US Senate is considering a bill that would give the President an internet “kill switch”. Funny how the one area most open to the widest possible spectrum of opinion and belief might be shut down at will, leaving only the regular propaganda outlets uncontrolled:

Under PCNAA, the federal government’s power to force private companies to comply with emergency decrees would become unusually broad. Any company on a list created by Homeland Security that also “relies on” the Internet, the telephone system, or any other component of the U.S. “information infrastructure” would be subject to command by a new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) that would be created inside Homeland Security.

The only obvious limitation on the NCCC’s emergency power is one paragraph in the Lieberman bill that appears to have grown out of the Bush-era flap over warrantless wiretapping. That limitation says that the NCCC cannot order broadband providers or other companies to “conduct surveillance” of Americans unless it’s otherwise legally authorized.

Lieberman said Thursday that enactment of his bill needed to be a top congressional priority. “For all of its ‘user-friendly’ allure, the Internet can also be a dangerous place with electronic pipelines that run directly into everything from our personal bank accounts to key infrastructure to government and industrial secrets,” he said. “Our economic security, national security and public safety are now all at risk from new kinds of enemies — cyber-warriors, cyber-spies, cyber-terrorists and cyber-criminals.”

For those of you who think this is a super-cool neat idea (because Obama wouldn’t ever abuse this new rule), just try the mental image of George Bush or Sarah Palin with this kind of power. Still seem like a good notion?

June 10, 2010

“If I had a MBillion dollars”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Humour, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

OTF threatens to punish students for ‘sins’ of the university

Filed under: Cancon, Education, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:03

Spite and malice are the only reasons for this kind of blatant blackmail attempt by the Ontario Teachers’ Federation:

Nipissing University and the Ontario Teachers’ Federation may be headed for a full-blown confrontation over the institution’s decision to confer an honorary degree on former Ontario premier Mike Harris, a polarizing politician largely abhorred by the teaching community for his education reforms.

The federation warned the university in a May 12 letter that it “cannot predict how teachers may demonstrate their displeasure” if the ceremony goes ahead, but university president Leslie Lovett-Doust said on Wednesday Mr. Harris will, indeed, receive the honorary Doctor of Letters on Thursday afternoon.

[. . .]

The teachers’ organization has already hinted some of its members may choose not to place Nipissing students in highly coveted student-teacher positions, and the federation may add teeth to that veiled threat.

“The OTF executive could, as an option, inform Nipissing that we are going to recommend to our members that they not take teachers for practicum placement from Nipissing University,” said Sam Hammond, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, one of four affiliate organizations under the OTF.

Mike Harris has been out of politics for (effectively) the entire time the Nipissing students were in high school and university, yet their future careers are now being explicitly threatened by the OTF. What possible way can these young adults be held responsible for the actions of a long-retired politician? Clearly, even the idiots at the OTF don’t think this is reasonable . . . but they do think it’s worth ruining their public image to prevent Mike Harris from being given an honorary degree.

Update: Matt Gurney scrawls his illegible “x” on the dotted line of the protest petition:

Former premier Mike Harris personally and single-handedly destroyed my childhood. Just ask the Ontario Teacher’s Federation and its other, affiliated unions. They will happily confirm that Mr. Harris did indeed, knowingly and willfully, set out to ruin everything in this province that was pure and good. And they will not let that go unpunished.

The article, which must have been dictated and then painstakingly transcribed, is finished with this bio note: “Matt Gurney is a member of the National Post editorial board, even though, having been educated during the Harris years, he is, of course, illiterate.”

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress