Spontaneous Arising

Condition 1

Oddly, this appeals to me...

...so long as they let me bring a few cases of my favorite books....

Filmed at McMurdo Station, where it is relatively sheltered by the surrounding hills. The weather in Antartica is classified as being Condition 3 (nice weather), Condition 2 (not so nice), or Condition 1...

Rev. Wright with Bill Moyers

In case you missed the PBS interview:

Pt. 1

Pt. 2

Cop Mentality

Everyone needs to meditate.

Please.

Student gets $628 ticket for sitting on park ledge

Most people who walk by Émilie Gamelin Park downtown see its many granite surfaces as an invitation to sit and relax.

Dozens were doing just that in the sun yesterday and ever since the park opened in 1992.

But as a Concordia University student found out Saturday, Montreal police, if they so choose, can hit you with a $628 ticket for nothing more menacing than sitting on a ledge.

Brendan Colin Jones, 25, was sitting on a park ledge on de Maisonneuve Blvd. just east of Berri St. At one point, he swung around southward and his feet were on grass behind the ledge.

The Victoria native's ticket cited his offending behaviour as "using urban equipment for uses other than those intended."

Montreal police Sgt. Ian Lafrenière said Jones was told "several times" that he was sitting "somewhere else than on a park bench" and in so doing was guilty of an infraction.

The ticket is the result of a new bylaw in Ville Marie, Lafrenière said, and the recipient has 30 days to contest it.

Jones, an economics and history student in his last year as an undergraduate, was studying at the Bibliothèque nationale when he decided to take a break and catch a few rays at the park.

He saw police approach people who were drinking alcohol nearby, took out his small digital camera and shot some photos.

"I saw this as an opportunity to observe how police deal with underprivileged people," Jones recounted.

Then a police officer came by and asked if he had been taking pictures.

"Once I realized she was attempting to get me to give her my camera, I became confused and told her I would not give it to her," Jones said.

"I had not committed any crime and had been sitting peacefully, just like many others around me."

The officer's two partners joined her, and Jones slipped the camera into his pocket. The police then told him it was illegal to sit in a city park when not on a bench and he would have to leave.

They said sitting on the ledge qualified as improper use of city structures, he recounted.

"I found this to be absurd, since there were no benches around and there were many other people sitting around the square," Jones said.

"The ledge and the area around the ledge where I was sitting is styled in such a way that it appears to have been intended to be used as a seating area in addition to any other apparent purpose it may have."

Jones said he was compelled to show ID and was handed the $628 ticket - a sum he can ill afford, because student loans from the British Columbia government saddle him with almost $30,000 in debt.

"I haven't paid my tuition for the last semester yet," he said.

He says he plans to challenge the ticket in Municipal Court.

Asked about fining someone for sitting in the park, Jean-Yves Duthel, spokesperson for Ville Marie borough mayor Benoit Labonté, said: "If they do it in respect of the bylaw, there is no problem."

The purpose of the granite surfaces at Émilie Gamelin Park is to have people sit on them, said Montreal architect Gavin Affleck, a specialist in urban spaces.

"A successful public space develops conviviality, use, social interaction, and obviously sitting around is basic," Affleck said in an interview.

"Trying to eliminate that from a public space is completely opposite to its whole intention."

Affleck said the fine is ironic because it penalizes "successful multi-use" of a low-lying wall.

Cops really, really don't like it to be observed (and recorded) -- not for any reason, ever.

It may not be against the law to capture them on video, but it may as well be.

Hero

Gary Buell has the scoop:

Alexander Cockburn raises the question of John McCain's collaboration with his captors as a POW. His piece is a come-on to an article by Douglas Valentine which is available by subscription only. Save your money--it is available here for free.

He follows with pertinent quotes from Valentine's article.

This puts into perspective the utter (and predictable) hypocrisy of the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry four years ago -- and on the fact that Junior went Absent Without Leave from his Nationa Guard unit during Vietnam. These people play on Americans' sense of patriotism in attacking true war heroes like Kerry, but when it comes to their own, we hear nothing but crickets.

Then again, as mentioned yesterday, the whole thing is Spectacle, just a gigantic soap opera designed to keep our minds diverted from the fact that we are slowly boiling to death.

American Idol, dont'cha know.

Scripted PA Primary Follow-Up

We've all agreed to pretend that we have free and open elections in this country. Due to this agreement, we gleefully (or not) swallow the script as spewed-forth by the corporate-owned-and-operated U.S. media.

So, chances are excellent that you've ingested the "fact" that Hillary Clinton "won" Pennsylvania with a 10-point cushion.

As per unsavory tradition, Brad Friedman and friends have spent the past 24 hours documenting the many script-controlling circumstances and events that have somehow escaped the awareness of nearly everyone.

Here is the front section of the final entry from Brad Blog's Pennsylvania Primary: E-Voting, Registration, Polling Place Problem Report Wire (do click over to read the whole thing, unless the thought of yet another stolen election strikes you as unimportant and/or impossible):

4/23, 2:40am ET: "Smooth Sailing" say the media...even if their very own reporting revealed otherwise...

This will likely be the last of our "Problem Report Wire" dispatches added to this item. We'll pick up the rest of the PA mess, and there is a lot of it, in subsequent blog items.

The long list of reports that you can peruse below, from the past 24 hours, mostly culled directly from the corporate media itself, belie the claims made all day yesterday by many public officials and even the media themselves, that all went well at the polls in the Keystone State.

Countless voters were unable to cast a vote yesterday in PA. The overwhelming majority of those who succeeded in doing so, will never be able to determine whether or not their vote was counted accurately, or even at all, given that some 85% of those votes were cast on machines in which it is literally impossible to verify that a single vote was ever recorded as per the voter's intent.

If any election official in PA (or anywhere else), or any voting machine company employee has proof otherwise, The BRAD BLOG would be happy to see it, and share it with everyone. But that proof will never come, because it cannot be done.

The headline of the first story our final posted collection below, may say it all. The headline indicates "Mostly smooth sailing at polls," yet we suspect the voters referenced, who will never know if their vote was counted at all, and those who have no idea if their vote was counted accurately (that would be all of them who voted on an e-voting machine!) may feel otherwise.

From Vindy.com...

Another machine, at the Greene Township Building on Dowling Schoolhouse Road, started freezing up at one point during the day, he said, so the polling place stopped using it."He said that machine has 23 votes on it."He said that if necessary, the company that manufactures the machines, Election Systems and Software out of Omaha, Neb., can retrieve those votes.

NOTE FROM JOHN GIDEON OF VOTERSUNITEORG: Since when is it NOT necessary to count every vote? This tells me that it may not be necessary, in the county's mind, to count the provisional ballots.

[...]

And so on and so forth, line after line after line, like a drone underlining the FACT that we no longer have elections in this country, but rather, we have digitized control devises that give the illusion of participation -- when, in fact, the Powers That Be are totally and completely free to manifest the scripted outcome.

You know, I go through this futile exercise every time America gathers to "elect" its national leaders, including the President.

And every time, I realize just how brainwashed we (the Rabble) have become.

I mean, our current government has been documented as the most corrupt, treasonous and dishonest in our entire history -- the hits just keep on coming -- and we just wander around as if things will magically "return to normal." We have the shortest memories of any mammal, such that we could not care less about this country's history of crimes against itself and against much of the rest of the world.

Given this state of affairs, why should anyone think that the population will wake up to the fact that it's happening again, right before our very eyes...?!?

Whatever. The fix is in. I guess I should just live with it, like everyone else.

UPDATE: By the way, this was the 2000th post at this blog.

You are correct, I really need to get a life....

Obligatory Untraceable Voting Machine Post

While my heart wants to believe that Al Giordano (and a record number of new PA voters) will deliver an almost-but-not-quite-win for Barry Obama, I would not be surprised to see a "surprise" AVALANCHE win for Mrs. Clinton.

Why?

Brad Friedman spells it out, as usual.