Oooooo! Safari extensions!

So Apple's just released Safari 5.0.1, along with a tasty-looking extensions gallery.  There were about half a dozen really useful extensions that I was using in Google Chrome on my PC, but I wanted to give Safari a fair go.  Well, here they are.  Anyone tried any of these yet?  Good?  Bad?

The early line from Gizmodo ...

More on police brutality during the G20, and institutional response

Thoughtful piece in NOW magazine, and my initial response:

All good stuff, but ultimately the fight isn't with the Board, the chief, or any discrete police force, be it municipal, provincial or federal. What's at issue here is a dysfunctional organizational and occupational culture that isn't going to be fixed by any institutional response or individual inquiry or review.

Consider: what is it about policing that makes individual cops think it's OK to beat the shit out of peaceful citizens exercising their fundamental rights? Or abuse the power of preventive detention, knowing that whatever charges are filed will ultimately never stand up, but also knowing that there won't be any individual or organizational accountability for the abuses visited upon people? As bad as the police misbehaviour during the G20 was, these questions go far beyond that weekend.

Which is why any anticipation of a meaningful institutional response is, in my submission, ultimately misguided and futile. The Board isn't going to do anything that seriously ruffles police feathers. They all saw what happened to Alan Heisey. Moreover, the fog and confusion arising from questions of overlapping jurisdiction, and just how far the Board's mandate extends, and the continuing distraction arising from the debate over policy versus operational matters, pretty much guarantees that the Board won't be able to accomplish anything meaningful.

Deputants will have their say. Recommendations will be made. Fingers will be wagged and tuts will be tutted. But as long as cop culture itself persists as it is currently, well ... don't hold your breath.

What we must avoid at all costs

These don't even begin to scratch the surface, but they're a start.

Fox News and the right-wing wackosphere are not ridiculous. They are not harmless. They are not merely mendacious buffoons. They are an obscene perversion of everything journalism and reasoned debate are supposed to be about.  The toxic effect that the Fox approach has had on American journalism, on civil discourse, on civil society itself has been so profound and so grossly disfiguring that merely documenting it would be the work of years. Analyzing it would take years more. Fixing it? I don't even want to try and guess.

Some progressive observers to the south have recognized the danger for a long time and have tried to fight back.  The always-incisive, always-on-the-mark Shoq rallies for a counteroffensive here.  It's a worthwhile cause, but I can't help fearing that it may be too late.

Charles Kaiser's marvellous essay sets out the shameful record of mainstream U.S. media outlets, and the Obama White House, in the fallout from the Shirley Sherrod "scandal."  (Manufactured scandal, actually.)

And then there's Keith Olbermann's special comment.

Part 1:



Part 2:



Follow these links and you get an idea of where the Harpokons are getting their marching orders and where they want to take us.  And then ask yourself if we can afford to shrug off Peladeau and Teneycke's little project.

Come on, not even a little bite?

Just so you can say you tasted it and survived?

Over at Sex, Bombs & Burgers, there's a post setting out why we're unlikely to see this crime against nature in Canada anytime soon.

So we'll import their toxic politics, but not their artery-clogging deep-fried dreck? Damn you, free market!  God damn you all to hell!

Fighting the good fight at the Police Services Board

It's extremely doubtful that we're going to get anything meaningful in the way of institutional response to the police abuses at the G20.  And thus far, a lot of the heat has been focused on the cops themselves, rather than on their political masters at Queen's Park and Ottawa.  (Yes, we're looking at you, Harper and McGuinty.)

But you've got to love Julian Falconer as he lays it out for the Toronto Police Services Board.  Watch this:

A fight you don't have to pick sides in

Wow.  The RCMP's senior command is in meltdown, open revolt against the Commissioner.

So on one side we have the senior leadership and collective organizational/cultural memory of a closed, tribal, hierarchical organization that's been described as "horribly broken."

On the other hand we have a longtime bureaucrat and current Harper political appointee, with Harper's personal mandate to fix that organization, who's being described as arrogant, abusive, closed-minded and impossible to work with.

Sometimes ... life is kind.

UPDATE:  Sorry, tonight's all about trashy entertainment and junk food.  You want intellectual content, go check out what Chet Scoville's got to say.  It's a tall cool drink of reason.

Ok, this census thing is getting out of hand

Two of my favourite progressive observers have noted the speed and suddenness with which the flying monkeys of the right have swung into line behind the Harpokons' inexplicable attack on the long-form census. As Chet Scoville notes at The Vanity Press, a couple of weeks ago nobody was even talking about it, but now it's tapping into long-held beliefs and long-suppressed rage and resentment of Condescending Urban Elitist Big Government Socialism. The fact that even Tom Flanagan's baffled by it is beside the point.

And note as well the all-or-nothing nature of some of the anti-census commentary. As Cathie from Canada notes, there's no nuance, no grey, nothing – it's all wrapped up in one big ball of string. If we let them collect census data, the next thing we know they'll be coming for our guns and forcing us to marry gay Muslims.

Another manifestation of the toxic right-wing tropes the Harpokons seem determined to import from their teabagging friends to the south. As we've seen in the case of the birthers, facts don't matter to these people. And when the facts get in the way of the narrative or the ideology, guess what gets thrown out the window?

That's the thing about manufactured controversies. For decades, nobody's gotten their knickers in a twist about the census, but out of nowhere, there's this huge groundswell of organized opposition to it? A grassroots movement of resentment that's been building for years? Can anyone say astroturf?