Don't know if the URL will stay linked to Lacy's letter, so I'm including a screen cap.
Once again, asshole cops pushing people around, brutally abusing them and stealing their personal property, and not even a hint of accountability. When normal people do this, it's called assault, robbery or stealing. When cops do it, well, the rules are different. Anyone still hoping for a meaningful institutional response?
Can someone please explain the difference between these sadistic pigs and the average gang of schoolyard bullies shaking down smaller kids for their lunch money or valuables? Because I really want to know.
Not much point in looking for anything from any particular level of government, but there is video of Lacy's arrest, and it should be possible to identify the lying, sadistic scumbags who grabbed her. Either way, how about a lawsuit in small claims court, identifying the police services board, the Toronto police, and perhaps the Integrated Security Unit, just for laughs?
Update: a video from Lacy identifying the cowardly, sadistic, tiny-dick piece of shit* hiding behind a badge. You have to love these guys. Can't keep a few dickheads from breaking windows, but they're pretty good at beating the shit out of slightly built women.
Update 2: When the facts come out, *this label's gonna stick. (H/t pogge.)
Again with the cultivated ignorance from the flying monkeys of the Right. One of the things you constantly hear them whining about, when they're complaining about the leftwing socialist libtard media, is about how the liberal media suppress freedom of speech because they won't publish "politically incorrect" viewpoints.
Should I make the type larger here? Would that be the written equivalent of speaking slowly and using short words?
How often do we have to go back to first principles with this crowd? I'll go through it once more:
Freedom of speech means you get to say whatever you want, no matter how repulsive. Nothing complicated about that.
It does not mean anyone else has a duty to listen to you.
It does not impose a corresponding obligation on anyone else to provide you with an audience.
It does not mean anyone else has to provide you with a forum.
It does not mean that you have the right to be taken seriously.
It does not mean that, having spoken your piece, you are somehow immune from criticism.
It means that you can say whatever you want, but if you:
Air-show flyboys rattling the rafters yesterday with their displays of testosterone-sodden militarism. Just like Gaza or Beirut, perhaps, except without the explosions and hundreds of deaths. I've always loved their sensitive and nuanced community outreach, too; yeah, we know it's louder than hell and causes permanent hearing damage, but it brings in the tourist dollars, so fuck you.
Is it unseemly to watch, on the off chance that one of the silly bastards might crash?
Noteworthy, though, is how they cancelled it the day before. Was it too cloudy? Were they afraid it might rain? Dear lord, if they can't stand up to a little rain, how will they stand up to al-Qaeda? How much did they say they're spending on the F-35 again?
Best part, though, is this little item about increased military cooperation between Russia and Israel. Heh. Does this mean Israeli jets will be providing fighter escort next time Russian bombers attempt to violate our pristine northern sovereignty? I'd pay to watch Dmitri spin that one ...
The most telling paragraph from Avaaz.org's response to the attempt to spam its petition:
It's deeply disturbing that in all Avaaz's years of campaigns against US President George Bush, Burmese, Zimbabwean and Sudanese dictators, irresponsible multinational corporations and corrupt politicians, no one has ever yet stooped to this kind of tactic to undermine our members' right to express their views.
Yep. Of all the nasties Avaaz has taken on, only Fox News North's supporters have gotten this dirty and desperate.
Update: Susan Delacourt puts the whole mess in perspective here. If she's right, then not only did Kory Teneycke know someone was adding the names of real people (Kady O'Malley, Paul Wells, Stephen Wicary, Andrew Coyne) to the Avaaz petition without their knowledge – he wrote his piece slamming Margaret Atwoodciting the fact that there were fake names on the petition in order to undermine it. And this guy's going to tell us we need a right-wing Fox Noise machine because the "lamestream media" lack journalistic credibility?
The online petition to keep Fox News North from infecting our national discourse is striking a nerve. Predictably, the flying monkeys of the right are whining about "censorship."
Here we go again. One of the most predictable things about the radical right is the incessant obsession with stripping words of their meanings. In their through-the-looking-glass world, words can mean anything. They can be stripped of their connotations and used with no regard for context, for history or even coherence. Case in point: among our southern friends, the disciples of Karl Rove have been so successful in turning the word "liberal" into an epithet that the entire national conversation has been hijacked. (Tip of the hat to my pal Sabina for the first link; I have a little trouble believing that the second one is genuine because the spelling and grammar are almost perfect.)
This is why it's more important than ever to ensure that terms don't get redefined. I've written previously about the need to maintain control over narratives, but it's even more fundamental to make sure that when we use terms like "freedom of speech," "civil liberties" and "censorship," we're not allowing our opponents to impose their own instrumental meanings. If we're not vigilant about that, we've lost the debate before it even begins.
With great respect to my conservative friends, nobody's arguing that Sun Media and Kory Teneycke shouldn't be allowed to set up their so-called "populist" news channel, even if the premise upon which they're basing it is contrived bullshit. What I object to is the idea of the PMO strong-arming the CRTC into making sure it gets a Category 1 licence, which would require cable carriers to include it as part of their basic TV packages. Ensuring that regulatory bodies maintain an impartial arms-length separation from the government of the day and enabling them to withstand transitory political pressure is not censorship, dear friends.
It's indicative of how debased public conversation can become, however, that principled devotion to the idea of an impartial public service can be smeared with inflammatory labels like censorship. Let's be clear: "censorship" is every bit as loaded a term as "racism." Accusations of censorship or hate speech are rhetorical and emotional cudgels which have the effect of shutting down debate. And by extension, claiming that someone else is accusing of you such things allows you to claim victim status. Either way, you've moved the debate away from issues of principle and policy and reframed it in far more volatile and easily manipulated emotional terms.
Margaret Atwood's entry into the discussion has prompted exactly this sort of response. Sun Media's Ottawa bureau chief has accused her of backing an anti-free-speech movement.
Over at Let Freedom Rain, Jymn Parrett writes about the weird entitlement thing right-wingers have when it comes to the media. They really believe that the media have an obligation to parrot their own sense of grievance and outrage, he argues, and it drives them bonkers when that doesn't happen. As he puts it:
Sharron Angle so perfectly encapsulated this entitlement syndrome when she famously told a newsperson that she thinks the role of the media is to reflect her positions as she recites them. Palin and Dr. Laura also have publicly expressed this idea, confusing their rights with that of the first amendment.
Note to conservatives - the media is not here to read your minds and print your thoughts. You've been spoiled for too long listening to dittoheads on the radio waves and the dunderheads at Fox News. We are not all Murdoch. And that royally pisses off the right.
It seems intuitively obvious, but when you're dealing with people who view the world through a warped ideological lens, nothing is obvious. People like Sarah Palin, Michael Savage and Laura Schlessinger have been quick to claim the mantle of victimhood and cry censorship when people call them on their hatred and stupidity, but it needs to be emphasized, and repeated as often as necessary: disagreeing with someone and holding her accountable for her irresponsible and hateful rhetoric is not censorship. Freedom of speech doesn't mean you're immune from criticism. Words have consequences.
In Politics and the English Language (1946), George Orwell argued that
... one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.
Once again, vigilance is key. If we allow them to define the words, we're letting them frame the issues and define the terms of the debate. We can't let them do that.
