Just in time for summer driving, hackers are changing the highway signs again in Kentucky and in Newfoundland.
Hope everyone is prepared for the zombie apocalypse!
"Do not go gentle into that good night. Blog, blog against the dying of the light"
The main change I’ve noticed in myself since the G20 is how much I hate cops now. Not only am I uncomfortable around them, as most people are—I hate them.Hundreds of people rallied in Toronto to remember the G20 police riot and repeat the call for a public inquiry:
I didn’t feel this way before the G20. But now, this newfound hatred permeates every part of my existence: from walking down streets to browsing on Facebook and everywhere in between. I firmly believe that police functioned during the G20 as enemies of democracy, civil rights, and social justice, and that they function in similar ways, around the world and in Canada, every single day.
But as embarrassing as Vancouver was to the nation, what happened in Toronto is much more serious and frightening.Yes. That's what we were complaining about a year ago.
Although the internally prepared report by the Toronto police service, which was released late Thursday, owned up to errors, it is a long way from accepting responsibility for the mayhem that overtook Canada's largest city during the G-20 meeting last year.
It wasn't just the downtown businesses and the burned police cars that hurt Canada's reputation. It wasn't even that the police willfully pulled back during the worst of the riots, presumably so they could corral, 'kettle,' arrest and beat nonviolent demonstrators who were a safe distance away.
What hurt Canada the most that weekend a year ago is the blow that was dealt to our constitutionally protected rights to assembly and speech.
So Bill Blair's had some time to reflect on last summer's G20 clusterfuck, and good and loyal servant he is, he's graced us with a report. Among other things, he praises his officers for "facing danger and extreme provocation."Emphasis mine.
Indeed. Takes a special kind of guts to stand your ground in the face of a small woman blowing soap bubbles.
Since becoming mayor, he has spurned every attempt by the gay community to reach out to him. He declined to come to a ceremony marking an international day opposing homophobia. He turned down many invitations from gay and lesbian groups to attend next week’s ceremonial flag raising for Pride Week, assigning city council’s Speaker to go in his place. It took him months even to do something as simple as sign the Pride Week proclamation.No, Marcus, it's not a mistake -- he DOES have a problem with gays and lesbians, like all homophobes do.
Whether he means to or not, he has left the unfortunate and probably mistaken impression that he has a problem with gays and lesbians.
They were persuaded [to wait] by former leader Stephane Dion, who reminded delegates of the hatchet jobs done on him and Ignatieff by relentless Tory attack ads. Liberals, he argued, must not choose a new leader until they've amassed the money and organization needed to fight back against the inevitable Tory onslaught . . . If Liberals choose a leader before undertaking any rebuilding, Dion said, "The leader will be without any protection facing the Conservatives."And Dion also says:
"the only good news of this disastrous (election) result" is that Liberals have plenty of time to pull themselves back together.How naive, to believe that Harper actually won't call another federal election until 2015.
“You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn't black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing,” McDonald, 64, told reporters. “You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, fuck it, I don't care what you think. I'm trying to do the right thing.
“I'm tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue-collar background. I'm trying to do the right thing, and that's where I'm going with this.”
Irrelevant on climate change, non existent at the United Nations, playing NO role in key diplomatic initiatives, retreating from traditional development and aid, apart from the military angle, we've fallen badly in the eyes of the world. . . . while Conservatives wave the flag at home, enamoured with our supposed international greatness, remember abroad that flag isn't placed so prominently on backpacks anymore, and that's far more telling than rhetoric.
... the pretense of substantive relevance (which, lame though it was in prior scandals, was at least maintained) has been more or less brazenly dispensed with here. . . . This is just pure mucking around in the private, consensual, unquestionably legal private sexual affairs of someone for partisan gain, voyeuristic fun and the soothing fulfillment of judgmental condemnation. And in that regard, it sets a new standard: the private sexual activities of public figures -- down to the most intimate details -- are now inherently newsworthy, without the need for any pretense of other relevance.
The review, launched by the police services board last September, aims to tackle questions that remain on the minds of many Torontonians almost a year after the summit last June: Who gave the orders that led to the “kettling” of peaceful protesters at Queen St. and Spadina Ave.? Why did police disperse demonstrators from the designated “Free Speech Zone” at Queen’s Park? Who is responsible for the miscommunication of the so-called five-metre fence law?Just so nobody forgets what it was like:
It will also examine the issue of officers removing badges, the conditions at the temporary G20 jail on Eastern Ave., and the police board’s role in planning and oversight of police operations for other large-scale events.
The first ever attempt to hold a Gay Pride rally in Trafalgar Square was in 1965. Two dozen people turned up – and they were mostly beaten by the police and arrested. Gay people were imprisoned for having sex, and even the most compassionate defense of gay people offered in public life was that they should be pitied for being mentally ill.(Via)
Imagine if you had stood in Trafalgar Square that day and told those two dozen brave men and women: “Forty-five years from now, they will stop the traffic in Central London for a Gay Pride parade on this very spot, and it will be attended by hundreds of thousands of people. There will be married gay couples, and representatives of every political party, and openly gay soldiers and government ministers and huge numbers of straight supporters – and it will be the homophobes who are regarded as freaks.” It would have seemed like a preposterous statement of science fiction. But it happened. It happened in one lifetime. Why? Not because the people in power spontaneously realized that millennia of persecuting gay people had been wrong, but because determined ordinary citizens banded together and demanded justice.
If that cause can be achieved, through persistent democratic pressure, anything can.
Not caring that one of your ministers inserts a "not" after a document had been signed by others, for example. Not respecting members of parliament who ask the government for the most basic of financial information supporting billions in purchases the government seeks to make. Making light of an historic contempt verdict . . .Breed disrespect, reap protest.Next year, Harper will have all the pages strip-searched before they enter the Chamber.