News
1. What’s Sauce for the Goose…
The union representing Wade Lavin, the police officer arrested for fraud, is upset that the police “terrorized” his family when making the arrest.
The union says Wade Lavin, a 15-year member of the Sydney-based regional force, was arrested early Wednesday morning at home with his family.
[NSGEU president Joan] Jessome said Lavin’s wife and three children — who are under the age of 11 — awoke to a team of RCMP officers, some armed with Colt C8 carbine assault rifles, who let themselves into their home.
“While the union cannot speak to the investigation of Mr. Lavin, I feel I must speak out and question whether it truly warranted terrorizing a family in their own home,” Jessome said in a news release.
Yes, that sounds outrageous. How dare they treat a police officer, charged with mere fraud, the way they treat Black people?
God, it’s not like he had dogs or something.
Or like he was a Black teen attending school.
It’s not like Lavin has been aggressive before or anything.
However, credibility was a key issue in the trial which was complicated by the fact that the majority of the witnesses had been drinking with the exception of [Donald] Campbell, [who had been charged with assaulting Constable Wade Lavin in 2008.]
During his testimony, Campbell contended it was Lavin who acted as the aggressor making a comment that he would get Campbell and his children.
Lavin testified it was Campbell who came looking for trouble and punched him when his head was turned.
Both men told the court about a previous run-in the pair had in 2006 at another Sydney club in which Lavin hit Campbell. The officer was disciplined for that outburst after an internal review.
In her closing address to the jury, defence lawyer Darlene MacRury urged the panel to review Lavin’s evidence carefully pointing out several inconsistencies between his court evidence and his police statement. Lavin explained those differences saying his memory was left somewhat hazy by the punch but his recollections are better today than at the time he was struck.
Yeah, speaking of terrorizing families:
“’I’m watching you and I’m going to get you and your kids,’” said Campbell, in recalling the officer’s remark.
2. So-bad
Andrella David won her racial discrimination case against Sobeys:
Andrella David went for ice cream at the Tantallon Sobeys in May 2009. While waiting in line, a staff member named Jennie Barnhill approached her and publicly accused her of being a “known shoplifter in the store.”
In front of other customers, the Sobeys employee said they had video footage of David stealing on previous occasions. Barnhill said they were watching David and would press charges if it happened again. The employee also accused her of robbing a nearby liquor store, another unsubstantiated claim…
…”If you think that’s me, you must think all black people look alike,” David told Barnhill upon screening the poor quality footage.
Wait a minute, I’m confused now! So this isn’t Andrella David?
What about this?
This isn’t her either?
This is blowing my mind! You mean those are all different people? And none of them is Andrella David? How can that be?
So this wasn’t her either?
“Hill said Barnhill discriminated against David because David is black, and because of her “perceived income” by suggesting the thefts occurred on “cheque day.”
Also not Andrella David.
3. If the sour sugar doesn’t get you, the pointy metal will
As if the flood at the VG wasn’t bad enough, now the candy is fucked up too:
Police said the woman discovered a paper clip when she bit into candies from a bag of Maynards Sour Cherry Blasters that she purchased two days ago.
First of all, who has the self control to wait two days before eating Sour Cherry Blasters? I feel skeptical of this story.
Second of all, you know it was THIS paper clip:
image from uncyclopedia.wikia.com
Me right now and every time I write the Examiner. (image from galleryhip.com)
Look at all these Euro snobs who are too good for Sour Cherry Blasters.
Oh noes! Look out for the aborted fetal cells that Obama puts in our Candy.
4. Really, where are people supposed to go?
The Community Carrot on Gottingen street is closing.
Marguerite Centre, the only home for women recovering from addictions, is in danger of closing:
The centre is running a deficit of $100,000, and that has the home asking for emergency funding from the province on the grounds the three recovery houses for men in the province receive more government funding than it does.
“The province isn’t acknowledging that women require the same amount of care as men,” said [Lisa Mullin, the home’s executive director]. “We all provide fantastic services. I’m not sure why we continue to be funded less than our counterparts.”
Mullin crunched some numbers and determined that each bed at male recovery centres gets about $22,000 from government, while it is about $16,000 at her centre.
Mullin says about $70,000 of the $100,000 deficit the centre is facing comes from the disparity in government funding.
Also:
The parents of a 24-year-old man with a mental disability who requires around-the-clock specialized care say they’re stunned he is being discharged from the Kings Regional Rehabilitation Centre with just a week’s notice and no place to live.
5. Signs of the times
My reaction to this article about two neighbours having a friendly competition over their election lawn signs was pretty much, “I guess.” And then I got to the money quote:
“I just thought Andy Fillmore lived there because the sign was so big and flashy,” said Hillary Madic, who passed through the neighbourhood Thursday morning.
HAHAHAHAHA.
Well, at least he’s not hiding in the bushes like certain Conservative candidates.
6. Shocking Bikes Only controversy!
In a political correctness run amok move back to segregation, radical activist bikes called for bikes only lanes, citing “safety.” Using discredited bike-biased propaganda, the bikes claimed that the vast majority of collisions between bikes and cars resulted in damage to the bike/biker. What about the unreported number of cars being attacked by bikes? Bikenazi activists bury these statistics, and activist judges have colluded in persecuting cars based on bike-created myths of “car violence.” This bike-run society is making it impossible to be a car these days, and young cars are being turned into bikes by the powerful bike lobby that teaches cars that there is something wrong with being a powerful car. Why are we teaching young cars that cars are dangerous and “accident prone?” Sadly, car oppression is taught in our schools now, with their liberal lies about “pollution” and “car pooling.”
Clearly this is an attack on the rights of cars. Are cars the only vehicles it’s okay to discriminate against these days? What’s next, bikes only bathrooms? If there’s so-called car privilege in this society, how come this happens?
You know what the elimination of cars from our society and bike-headed households leads to? Criminality! Look at this image of criminal bikes!
Upstanding officer and family man Wade Levin being attacked by thug bikes.
…………
Okay, seriously now, apparently the giant pictures of bikes in the bike lanes were confusing, so the city is putting up no parking signs to help people not park in the bike lanes.
I can only conclude that the people parking in the bike lanes are tourists from Ontario.
Apparently bike symbol designs are controversial.
Views
1. Some news from inside
Word from inside the federal corrections institutions is that inmates have been organizing “Anybody But Harper” campaigns and making sure their fellow prisoners are registered to vote. The inmates have been actively educating each other about the impact of Harper’s government on mass incarceration and have been mobilizing within the prisons to make sure prisoners are aware of their voting rights. Inmates also suspect that as a result of this voting activity, they will face lockdowns and other tactics designed to keep them from the ballot box and from organizing with each other.
Asaf Rashid has been interviewing a federal prisoner, John Chaif, about the struggle of voting within institutions.
The women in Nova debated Conservative candidate Scott Armstrong.
“They more than once mentioned that the Conservatives were making it harder for people with mental health issues, addictions and poverty to get along in society. So they were quite critical.”
In other inmate news, an inmate reports that he won his habeas corpus hearing for unlawful detainment. He challenged Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility on their use of solitary confinement and on the conditions on lockdown ranges. One thing at issue was the use of solitary confinement due to lack of other options — if an inmate has incompatibles (problems with other inmates) and there’s no available space, inmates are placed into segregation where they are denied the privileges of other ranges such as activities, time outside, time outside the cell, phone calls, etc. even though they are not being punished for anything. The inmate was able to catch staff from the facility in “inconsistencies” in their testimony. This case is promising as it potentially opens the door for challenging the widespread use of solitary confinement in Nova Scotia prisons.
2. CWILA count
The CWILA (Canadian Women in Literature) count for 2014 has been released. The count examines the gender gap in Canadian literature.
5,866 book reviews across 32 journals and newspapers (including five French language) were counted. While men and women wrote reviews at an equal rate, in 2014, men reviewed books by men 2.5 times more than books by women.
One of the counters for CWILA is Dr. Erin Wunker, who recently responded to Rex Murphy’s dismissal of rape culture, feminist teaching, and the Humanities.
3. Remembering the Steel Plant
Artist Keith Baldwin, a former steelworker, has painted a mural remembering the Sydney Steel Plant on the wall of the Discount Dollar in Whitney Pier.
Some lovely quotes from the article:
“I just want people to remember the plant,” [Baldwin] says. “It’s gone now. You look over the overpass and there’s nothing there. I still see it myself, and here it is on the building so everyone can enjoy it.”
“It continues to crystallize our history here,”[Alan Nathanson] says. “From the early 1900s, when the steel plant was founded, over 50 different cultural and ethnic groups came to work at the plant.
“There are still some left here that are very vibrant and strong, and a sense of the steel plant runs through our veins.”
“We got the open hearth and the mills and the blast furnace and the smoke coming out of the stacks, the pollution and all that goes with it,” [Baldwin] says.
“The sun setting down on the plant and all the men are inside, busy working. It’s an era, it’s gone and I’m going to miss it myself and many other men and families. God love them all.”
Elizabeth Beaton’s article, An African-American Community in Cape Breton, 1901-1904, recounts some significant African Nova Scotian history in the context of the plant.
4. Frobitcher
Some reading for “Thanksgiving” weekend:
The history of colonization and the conquest of the Americas is often romanticized, mythologized, and minced and cut until it is nothing but bare bones of a narrowed historical narrative that dresses colonization in the terms of ‘discovery.’ The Age of Discovery. Even the word ‘discovery’ suggest a different rhetoric. It doesn’t help that the celebration of Columbus Day and Thanksgiving has been celebrated in such a way that dismisses the darkened, brutal past of the relationship between Indigenous people and colonization that has often been marginalized and ignored, if not forgotten.
Recently, in mid-September, Canada has rejected the United Nations rights panel to a nation review to end violence against Aboriginal women. The response has gained much criticism from other countries such as Cuba, Iran, Belarus, and Russia, who by the Globe and Mail have been described as “countries with poor rights records.” In a rebuttal, Canada’s ambassador in the UN, Elissa Golberg, has noted that “Canada is proud of its human rights records, and our peaceful and diverse society. (…) [Canada] has a strong legal and policy framework for the promotion and protection of human rights, and an independent court system.”
Our peaceful and diverse society?
Diverse, yes. Peaceful, not so much. This is Canadian exceptionalism at its best. Golberg perpetuates the idea that dismisses the nation’s crime against groups of minorities at the expense of heralding the nation as ultimately, better than any other. It glosses over Canada’s colonial history fraught with violence, abuse, poverty, and genocide.
Re: Bikes only controversy
Also, why isn’t anybody talking about bike-on-bike violence!