the return of Friday music!

A couple of tunes for what appears to have become the second largest national holiday in the U.S. and rapidly in Canada, too. Why celebrate Easter, Diwali or Labour Day when you can embrace rampant consumerism and materialism, and maybe get trampled to death to save $50 on a new flatscreen, purse or gadget?



Tweet

Headline of the week, maybe of the year

Thank you Toronto Star , for making the headline suit the story

Tweet

We spent a billion dollars for this?

Note that most of these people were arrested in pre-dawn raids BEFORE the G20 demonstrations began, thanks to the use of infiltrators and police spies and agents provocateurs. And it cost taxpayers about a billion dollars, not including the fake lake and Tony Clement's gazebo.

obviously these 17 people posed an serious existential threat to country and civilization and it was worth every cent of that billion dollars to lock them up for the last year and to arrest over 1,000 people, only about 100 of which still face charges.
Tweet

1,000 word post

 Shamelessly stolen from Montreal Simon, whose excellent blog should be regular reading
Tweet

the other kind of beat poets

Former Poet Laureate of the United States and UC Berkley professor Robert Hass didn't want to believe that the police were needlessly beating students at Occupy Berkley, so he went down to the demonstration to see what was happening and lo and behold, he and his wife got their fair share of abuse.

My wife bounced nimbly to her feet. I tripped and almost fell over her trying to help her up, and at that moment the deputies in the cordon surged forward and, using their clubs as battering rams, began to hammer at the bodies of the line of students. It was stunning to see. They swung hard into their chests and bellies. Particularly shocking to me — it must be a generational reaction — was that they assaulted both the young men and the young women with the same indiscriminate force. If the students turned away, they pounded their ribs. If they turned further away to escape, they hit them on their spines. NONE of the police officers invited us to disperse or gave any warning. We couldn’t have dispersed if we’d wanted to because the crowd behind us was pushing forward to see what was going on.

I suspect that people will only take this for so long before there is considerable pushback against the police. The more sons and daughters of the middle class that get teargassed, peppersprayed and beaten, the fewer fans the police will have among the populace, and the more they will be viewed as the enemy rather than the protectors of the populace.
When that tipping point is reached, there is going to be real and lasting damage to the fabric of society.

Somebody please explain to me how UC Davis Police Lt. John Pike is one of the "good guys" and not a criminal. He's the one you see at the start of this video pepperspraying a group of seated, non-threatening, clearly non-violent protestors.



What makes him any better than the small time gangbanger, Hells' Angel thug or mob enforcer? This kind of action will not always be met with chants. When the general populace start to see the police as the enemy instead of those who serve and protect, it is a bell you can't unring.
Tweet