Abuse of power and authority in Ottawa.

Zoom at knitnut writes about this from a blogger's perspective, one who has been covering gratuitous police brutality in Ottawa for a while.

However, when I read the original news story something else emerged, as malign as unwarranted and illegal cop violence but symptomatic of a specific authoritarianism.

An Ottawa police officer who hit a 15-year-old boy in the head several times during an arrest in a darkened Rockcliffe Park Public School yard has been cleared of misconduct after a review concluded the constable used “accepted” standards for use of force. [...]

While the probe couldn’t figure out how many times McFadden hit the boy, it is known that the officer broke his left hand — the hand he used to strike the boy in the head.

The trouble began just before 10:30 on the night in question. There had been complaints about mischief at the school yard weeks earlier, so Ottawa police set up a four-officer surveillance team.

The team included two plainclothes officers, one of whom wore shorts and a backwards ballcap, a sergeant, and an officer positioned inside the school, which is known for educating the children of diplomats and politicians, including those of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. [my italics]

And there you have it. Just as the multiple disruptions of civil rights during the G-20 were the required trappings of Contempt Party leader's MASSIVE *security* show, so must this particular surveillance "incident" exonerate police officers of charges that unwarranted and brutal force was deployed. The conclusions of the Review Board were predictable, as with the official refusal by Toronto Police to investigate cops' criminal actions during the G20.

SHithead and his Con jobs found in the RCMP and now in municipal police forces their most compliant and eager bullies.

The Republicans' Pitbull and his quest for new fire hydrants.

Rust never sleeps. Karl Rove has helped his party launch a new "grass-roots" organization intended to funnel rightwing billionaires' contribution toward the defeat of Democrat candidates in the US fall elections.

You may recall that Rove was lured to Toronto during the by ersatz doctor Charles McVety to highlight his mini G8/G20 extravaganza.

More about American Crossroads here. ReformaTories have a history of being coached by US experts in various sleazy political tactics.

Watch for some Canadian version of Rove's project to be spawned in the months to come, in support of the Cons' attempt to elect a majority government for Harper.

Clarification needed about BQ Mourani's statement on "TB inoculation".

At the 4:53 mark here, Kady O'Malley says:

I think it's safe to say that Mourani's allegation that some detainees were vaccinated against their will managed to wake up the media table. For tuberculosis, apparently. Not heard that one before.

Later, the Toronto Star also reported:

Conservative members of the Commons public safety and national security committee talked out the clock preventing a motion to review controversial security matters, arguing it would only lend a voice to the thugs, hooligans and anarchists who traumatized Toronto last month during the gathering of world leaders. [...]

An impassioned Bloc Québécois MP Maria Mourani emphasized that if and when the probe happens it must be a thorough airing, given the unsubstantiated reports she is hearing about the conduct of police, including threatening women with rape, to involuntary vaccination of some protesters and others who were rounded up.

DJ! co-blogger fern hill shared the following with me:

Just now on Facebook, someone reported a private email from a mother of one of the people claiming to have been given a shot. The kid is from Quebec and he told his mother that the people were speaking in English so fast that he didn't understand, but after it was done, he's pretty sure someone said 'tuberculosis'. He also told his mother that only francophones were getting this special treatment.

I spoke to my daughter who is a physician in Toronto. There are some serious concerns involved because:

1. There's no effective vaccine against TB.
2. A mandatory test is given to all health care workers, teachers, etc. in order to detect TB antibodies and it ressembles a vaccine injection but anyone who receives that must have the spot examined to determine if there's a reaction, 48-72 hours later.
3. A professional health care worker in Ontario - RN, RPN, MD - would refuse to administer any kind of injection without the patient's consent.

So it's unlikely to have anything to do with TB and whoever administered it to the detainees was doing so against the ethical rules of their profession, if indeed it was a regulated health care worker.

La Presse and Le Devoir (not available online) have all provided first-person accounts of young Québecois activists who were rounded up in the gymnasium of the University of Toronto and detained for days in the most rudimentary conditions that barely met the standard set by the Geneva Convention for military prisoners.

But no substantiation yet regarding this mystery medical procedure.

So DAMMIT JANET! is asking faithful readers to supply credible information regarding the claim advanced by Mourani, as this is an outrage that should be investigated.

Cherchez la police!

Here's a story that a strong, independent, credible news gathering organization with deep pockets and resourceful journalists should investigate.


It's not an original narrative; tyrants in many countries over the centuries have made use of military or police forces to build, consolidate and maintain their power. What may be unique to Canada is the Faustian deal that a (once-upon-a-time) admired and respected crime-fighting organization has made with a narcissistic and vindictive control freak.

Though Chretien may have been the first to overtly enlist the RCMP in support of an authoritarian agenda, Stevie Spiteful has tapped the right-wing elements of the organization to its murkiest and most fascistic depths. He tested the waters, back in 2005:

During the last federal election the RCMP announced a (fraudulent?) investigation into the Ralph Goodale (Liberal Minister of Finance) Income Trust measures. The announcement was unprecedented, was apparently fraudulent, and is alleged to have seriously changed the outcome of the election [...]

The success of this tactic only whetted Harper's appetite and it remains to be seen whether this is valid speculation:

One is forced to wonder if a hidden agenda of the government was to build the RCMP's technical and surveillance capacity. Are they preparing for the kind of social unrest that might develop in the future if Canada is serious about meeting its G20 pledge of halving its deficit by 2013 – at a time when the world seems heading back into recession? Do our security forces look at the rising tide of strikes and protests in Europe and decide to get ready here?

One need not be paranoid to imagine how abusive and unbridled Stevie and his bullies could and would become if provided with a majority of seats in Parliament.

Not all Ontario public officials have been bullied into submission by Stevie Spiteful

Less than a month ago,

[...] after a nasty, three-month fight to keep his job was publicly played out. [Ontario Ombudsman André] Marin said his office is doing what it does best by “staying the course” and ignoring detractors. The ombudsman can serve as a “bulwark of democracy” in troubled economic times, Marin said. The report highlights the work the provincial watchdog did throughout the year.

Little did Marin suspect, when he said those words, that he would be the first public official to investigate the complaints of citizens bullied by riot police and deprived of civil liberties and human rights during the G-20 in Toronto.


Today, Marin stated in a news release:

[...] his investigation will probe "the origin and subsequent communication of the controversial security regulation passed by the province prior to the June 26-27 G20 summit."

The temporary powers regulation, which was published in the official Ontario Gazette last Saturday, five days after it lapsed, became publicly known when a man was arrested two days before the summit for refusing to provide ID to police while exploring the fence around the G20 "red zone." [...]

Marin said his office has received 22 complaints alleging a lack of transparency over the new rules. "The complaints we've received so far raise serious concerns about this regulation and the way it was communicated, and I think there is a very strong public interest in finding out exactly what happened and how that affected the rest of the events of the G20 weekend," [...]

Good. It's a start.

It's official.

Dalton "Don't Cry For Me Mississauga" McGuinty is Stevie Spiteful's bitch.

The only source in English that I could find for what he said on Radio-Canada on the 3pm news broadcast is this one. Essentially McGuinty stated that he will not order a public inquiry that would be legally binding. He told reporters Wednesday that only the federal government can call for such a probe and that his balls the ball is in the Fed's court.

Le premier ministre de l'Ontario, Dalton McGuinty, résiste toujours à la pression et réitère qu'il n'a pas l'intention de déclencher une enquête publique sur le travail des forces de l'ordre lors du sommet du G20 à Toronto.

Ce dernier estime qu'une telle enquête serait plutôt du ressort du gouvernement fédéral.

So our brave, brave premier is hiding behind Stevie and his bullies. That should make him even less popular than he is now.

Sheep Look Up. . .

. . . or at least at YouTube.

Seems Chet was right. Commenting on my despairing post on this poll, indicating that 73 per cent of Canadians were good with the G8/G20 police state, he said:

Most people thought the War Measures Act was justified when Trudeau used it. It's early days yet.

That poll was published on June 30 (doesn't say when it was taken).

Here's another poll -- albeit online -- going on right now.

The figures are completely reversed with 72 per cent now saying that the police response was not appropriate.

We've got to keep up the pressure. And make sure the shit lands where it should.

Right here:



Update from deBeauxOs: via a tweet from A_Z, a news item says an independent civilian inquiry into G-20 police tactics has just been approved by the Toronto Police Services Board.

And now for something completely different ...

In the hoohaw leading up to the G-8/G-20 spectacle and photo opp for Stevie Spiteful, we missed a delicious little tempest in a teapot about $arah, Bristol and a US political satirist.


This is what set off the fury of Palin's groupies - a blogpost and a cartoon for Florida's Sun-Sentinel.

Back during the 2008 presidential campaign, when Sarah Palin and her family were introduced to America in all their homespun glory, I couldn’t help but imagine what the Republican spin machine would have done had Joe Biden’s daughter been the one to get pregnant out of wedlock as a teenager.

Because it was Sarah Palin’s daughter, however, the pregnancy became a celebration of life and an affirmation, somehow, of the emblematic American family. Hypocrisy is a commodity that has never been in short supply in American politics. The latest, most titillating case is that of U.S. Congressman Mark Souder of Indiana, a fierce protector of traditional family values (with all the usual anti-gay riffs), who just resigned from office.

Not only did he have sex with a staffer, but he even sat for a video interview with her touting the virtues of abstinence.

Well. The usual mob of fundamentalist religious rightwing zealots went ballistic, deliberately obfuscating the point of Lowe's observations (Bristol Palin marketing herself as a 30K per-appearance motivational speaker? that's a nifty mash-up of political opportunism and greed) while spinning it as an attack upon the sacred $arah and her holy progeny. This is typical:

Every parent viewing Lowe's cartoon should be outraged at his salacious, left-handed effort to demean Bristol Palin and to encourage America's daughters to embrace immoral practices.

As we've often observed when writing about Bible Spice and her traveling freak show, we just couldn't make this sh*t up.

Will cops be charged?

If an internal investigation is held as Toronto Police Chief Blair has stated, will the thugs and goons in police uniform found guilty of civil rights abuse be held accountable for their actions? Or will it be a witch hunt to provide Bully Billy Boy with the information he needs to retaliate against the cops who 'broke rank' by expressing compassion toward prisoners?

In accounts written by individuals who suffered the "abridgement" of their civil and human rights by riot cops, they mention those who were visibly disturbed by the unwarranted violent behaviour of their comrades in arms.

From here:

An older female guard with short dark hair and glasses is offering me a cup of watered down Tang and instructing my binds be cut. I’m given a second cup of juice and new, looser cuffs. They ask if I’m ok, I’m so confused about why I’m outside the cell and ask “What’s going on?” They ask if I’m alright, and I say “I guess so” then they open the cage and put me back. [...] “What happened?” I ask with a now splitting headache. “You passed out man!” they tell me. [...] My head kills, they ask for medical attention for me, I second the motion and we’re told “Not right now”. [...] The female officer who helped me aids in bringing some watery orange Tang to all the cells. We line up, quietly and broken, for our drink. I find out from Kate that this same female officer broke down and cried with the women at their cell. She was sobbing and apologizing, “This is wrong, you shouldn’t be here. This is all so wrong.”

And this:

Not all officers behaved like thugs. Taylor reports several broke down emotionally in the chaos. [...] The men sardined in Taylor’s cell got the attention of Toronto Special Police Constable White and asked him about the deplorable conditions. “I’m just a pea in a pod. I can’t help,” White said.

Chrystal Ocean at Challenging the Commonplace draws our attention to recent legal and court-directed settlements in support of demonstrators and by-standers illegally arrested by police in 2000 and 2004 in Washington D.C.

Welcome to Bill Blair and Stevie Harper's New©™ Canada.

"Spectacular claims have emerged ..."

And none more spectacular than the sob story Toronto Police Chief Bill 'Five Metres of BS' Blair gave Christie Blatchford in an Exclusive interview. The sound you hear as you read the piece is that of Blatchie's panties sliding to the floor.

In a MASSIVE attempt to cover his derrière, Blair agonizes over a now-emerging propaganda "revelation" that generic Blak Blok anarkists derailed the arrival of a Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan at the coroner's office.

The final chapter of the repatriation for Sergeant Jimmy MacNeil last Friday had to be cut short outside the coroner’s office in Toronto when Black Bloc anarchists tried to break through police lines to attack.

The revelation came during an hour-long interview Wednesday with Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, during which he also confessed he is worried about how the events of last weekend may have affected the “public trust” the force must have with its citizens.

At the time the cortège carrying Sgt. MacNeil’s body was arriving at the coroner’s office on Grosvenor Street, just two short blocks north of College Street, a group of about 30 demonstrators dressed in black moved out of a crowd of 2,000 who had massed in front of police headquarters on College.

“The Black Bloc was here and they charged up the thing [laneway], as a matter of fact the repatriation was kind of interrupted,” Chief Blair said. “My public order guys ran through the lines that we had to close off the alley that they were trying to get up [to Grosvenor] with.”

Further on in the Globe & Mail piece, 'I luvs me a MAN in uniform' Blatchford claims this "revelation" was only "mentioned" in the context of an answer about the "temporary regulation designating the area of the G20 Summit as a place where the Public Works Protection Act would apply".

What-evah, Christie. Perhaps you are dazzled by Chief Blair's charms, but those of us - who are not swooning to our knees in his presence - suspect his strategically timed interview with you is all part and parcel of a furious attempt of revisionism and retroactive justification.

Bonus: Go read Alison at Creekside - G20 : Cops avenge themselves on satirist

What's the difference between a krusading berserker kop and a blak blok anarkist at the Toronto g-20?

The krusading berserker kop has "special powers" that this regulation gives him.

Other than that, they're both bullies hiding behind a black uniform, weapons of destruction, an organization and the fury they unleash upon people and property.

Their fear and loathing of the "enemy" is the fuel for their violence; the target of their rage shifts in accordance with their allegiances.

Neither is necessarily aligned with a political orientation; they're opportunists, pragmatists and followers.

They're killer ants.

Are you for us or against us?

This lovely little pallid-skinned family learned the hard way that the law a temporary regulation as enforced by police officers is a rough and blunt instrument.

It was a raid scripted straight from the cliché template of some Hollywood hack writer -
Opening: cops descend upon a crack house, break doors down, kick the residents awake, cuff them and lock them up.

Except the purpose of the warrant was to pre-emptively charge, arrest and detain community activists planning protest strategies during the G-20. That was the purported crime targeted by police.

As John Booth writes here, respect of citizens' civil rights was not on display last night.

[He]was woken at 4 am this morning to find police pointing a gun in his face. He was handcuffed and brought outside. Thirty minutes later police apologize to him. Booth is the upstairs neighbour of some G20 protesters, but he lives in a separate unit with his wife and six month old child.

“You hear all this stuff in the news about this one billion dollars' worth of security which is supposed to protect the public - well I am a great example of an innocent by-stander who has been violated despite this very claim. And this is allegedly our tax payers dollars at work.”

What did Stevie Spiteful purchase with the 1,100,000,000. dollars he spent on G-20 and G-8 public government security. A whole lot of weapons, fences, overtime, contracted-out services.

Not much in the way of serving and protecting the public, and very little in the way of skills, competence and discernment.

Police arrest Red Green - what's next?

Alison at Creekside (crossposted at Dr Dawg's) writes about the G-20 security theatre that played out yesterday.

The faceless members of the Integrated Security Unit quickly faded back into the shadows, satisfied that the arrest of some sad schmuck and his little dog will have fed the media hunger for gripping Law & Order drama. (Those free cocktails provided around Lake Con-Begone will slake their thirst.)

Up next. It appears that Governor Premier McGuinty and his star chamber passed a secret regulation that gives the Toronto police some very interesting powers. Like deadly virus swapping bits of DNA that render them resistant to antibiotics, the municipal police are being coached by the RCMP in the fine art of abusing civilians.

It seems inevitable that the police will arrest the families participating in the CLC demonstration under the pretext that adults are using their children as human shields.

After that, it's just a short retroactively-legislated hop to declaring them unfit parents and placing the kids in evangelical christians' homes for the purpose of re-education.

Update: Good news - again, from Alison at Creekside, we learn that one RCMP officer was removed from a Ryerson building at the request of lawful campus members.

The invasion continues.

25 years ago, when gay icon Bette Midler married Martin Von Haselberg, she would joke that she and her husband enjoyed kinky sex. "I dress up like Poland and I ask him to invade me," was her provocative one-liner, meant to underline their geo-political and cultural differences. As far as I know, they are still (heterosexually) married.

Neither Bette nor Martin will be speaking at the mini-G-20 Alison writes about at Creekside. In fact, there are no women in the line-up; only the voices of male, pallid-skinned, rightwing fundamentalist christian (and a token non-perfected jew) zealots will be heard. Karl Rove. Michael Coren. Grant Jeffrey ... Canada's "most prolific" writer? Snerk. News of Margaret Atwood have not reached inside Dokter McVety's protective bubble?

Some do enjoy the smell of fire-and-brimstone in the morning.

Then they came for the trees ... (Updated)

The Integrated Security Unit is planning to clear-cut all trees (and presumably, MASSIVE shrubs too) from the RCMP-controlled zones during the G-20 in Toronto.

The trees could be ripped out of the ground by demonstrators “and then you’ve got a huge bar,” said Constable Wendy Drummond, a spokeswoman for the Integrated Security Unit. [...] Organizers would not say which trees or how many will be hauled away.

“If they’re removing any trees, it’s because they don’t want folks to jump over and launch things from above,” said local city councillor Adam Vaughan.

Mr. Calzavara says the thought that a sapling could be turned into a weapon is “outrageous.” “I would challenge the police to get a couple of burly officers and try to pull one of these trees out of the ground,” he said. “You’d need an axe to cut the thing down. And if you’ve already got an axe, you wouldn’t need a tree.”

Uh-oh. I predict that Mr Calzavara will be visited by the forces of public government order shortly and that all the sharp implements in his home will be confiscated. He might be even arrested for providing the terrists with instructions on weapons deployment.

The only sane response to this insanity is: "Pitchez la vache!"

Update from "No Stone Left Undisturbed" News.

More from Constable Drummond, spokesthingy for the Integrated Security Unit.

But it’s not all about keeping the trees from becoming projectiles, she said. “Trees in full bloom have obscure views and observation is key in a lot of our policing.”

Trees: gone. Next: rocks.

It beats super-gluing every stone to the ground. Summit security are having fences erected around Lake Shore Blvd. to enclose the piles of landscaping stones so the rocks can't be picked up during protests and used as projectiles -- you know, like a sapling can be.

We couldn't make up such idiocy. Tranna residents should thank Stevie and his New©™ Government for these experiential opportunities inspired by the surrealistic theatre of Beckett, Ionesco and Pinter.

Un grand merci to our reader and buddy k'in for the original headline and the source. She is a most appreciated contributor to this blog, in the comment section.

The difference between inflammatory and defamatory.

The Toronto Police union is calling for Sid Ryan to resign after the labour leader suggested police may plant agent provocateurs among the G20 protesters to incite violence. “It’s a totally irresponsible, inflammatory and idiotic thing to say for someone in his position. Nothing could be further from the truth,” said Mike McCormack, president of the Toronto Police Association. “It’s a total insult to police everywhere.”

At a Wednesday news conference for the “People First!” rally, Ryan said he had concerns the police would use disguised agents to cause chaos in order to provoke a violent response from security forces. “They’ve done it before,” said Ryan, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour. “I’m concerned about that as a tactic to justify police presence and justify the spending of $1.3 billion on security.”

From here. Notice McCormack said inflammatory and not defamatory. An explanation for this would be, as the letter from the Council of Canadians to Harper illustrates, there is cause for such concerns.

“Three undercover police officers attempted to incite violence in 2007 at the Montebello protest against the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The proof of their actions was caught on film,” adds Barlow. “The Sûreté du Québec was forced to admit that they were police officers, dressed in black and holding rocks. Yet, to date no one has been held accountable and through his silence, Harper appears to have given tacit approval of the use of agents provocateurs.”

It was the above incident that came to mind when this occurred in Ottawa, shortly before Stevie and his bullies disclosed the billion dollars (and rising) budget anticipated for the G-8/B-20 held in Ontario, much of it dedicated to public government security.

Lake of Nightmares ....

Emperor Stevie the Flatulent First believes if you build it, they will come.

It should be interesting to read what the international media will say and write about Lake Ersatz (which a member of Bread'n'Roses adroitly pegged as a shallow pool of ReformaTory talent) and all the attendent perks and hoo-haw.

It's another way for Stevie and his cadre of bullies to manage and massage their message. And the fact he's using money slashed from CIDA funding previously granted to organizations like MATCH International is just the whipped cream on his sundae.

I tend to think about this 2 million $$$ exercise of lunatic largesse in hopeful terms - as Lake ConBeGone. Stevie thinks he knows about feeding sharks but once there's blood in the water, nobody in the water is safe. He has fed a number of his opponents - and members of his own New©™ Government to those yawing jaws.

He could be next. Indigestible though his reign as Supreme Leader was, he will be a choice morsel chunk when his time comes.