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Morning Brew: SIU Probes Shooting at Movie Theater, Challenging Health Canada's Monopoly on Medical Marijuana, Cora's Re-opens, Olympic Torch Bearer Assaulted in Guelph, Rescue in High Park Pond
Photo: "sunset at cherry beach" by louise@toronto, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):
The Special Investigations Unit has been called in to piece together an incident at a Scarborough movie theater that resulted in officers shooting and killing a Montreal man. Details are still sketchy, and police are mum (as they usually are in cases that involve civilian death at the hands of police).
Sam Mellace, a former Torontonian and now licensed B.C. pot grower, wants to eliminate Health Canada's monopoly on medical marijuana production. Not only is competition in this area good for the economy, but it also may force the government to produce stuff that's of comparable quality to what is readily found... umm... outside of the licensed realm.
Popular Annex pizza joint Cora's is once again open for business after forced closure by Toronto Public Health for health code violations related to rodent infestation. According to the Sun, the owners are still denying the inspector's finding of dead rats, instead claiming that it was a mouse and it was dead in a trap.
Out in Guelph, an Olympic torch bearer was knocked to the ground by a protester as the procession made its way through the downtown area. The flame wasn't extinguished, the bearer wasn't hurt, and the accused has been arrested and charged with assault.
Two High Park "residents" were saved from potentially disastrous, icy fate on Grenadier Pond in a daring rescue by the Toronto Police Marine Unit. Community members feared that the ducks, known affectionately as Brownie and Greenie, would freeze in the pond and/or be vulnerable to coyotes, so in came the boys in blue with drysuits, life jackets and a heroic effort that makes rescuing a cat from a tree seem like desk duty.
And Transport Canada is taking things ever further, and more or less enforcing a no carry-on rule for flights headed to the U.S. Some exceptions to the rule do exist (passengers can carry on medical devices, small purses, coats, items for care of infants, and cameras ad laptop computers, etc.). The RCMP have also joined the security fray at Pearson, bringing in 40 officers to join the efforts.
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You expect the Toronto Police to investigate the Toronto Police to determine that and appease the public too? I don't think so.
Sorry to inform you, the torch relay isn't ancient. It was started by the Nazis in the 1936 Olympics as propaganda. But yeah, a better tactic is just to ignore this whole Olympics thing altogether.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
The Nazis were innovative in their use of propaganda and had great visual inspiration. Leni was just one of many visual artists that helped them to excel visually as they pursued genocide and world domination - their architecture was rather good, especially Speer's Cathedral of Light for rallies. Their work is copied relentlessly well beyond the Torch Relay thanks to its utility in propaganda and film making, but no one mentions the dark dark sources, just as no one mentions the Japanese and German origins of much physiological data.
I really wish we didn't have the Olympics (horribly corrupt and a waste of money) and that we didn't do a torch run (vicious Nazi past and the explicit propaganda of it - see Beijing's global torch tour). Still no reason to attack the runners. Unfortunately the protester won't get the 15+ years that her terrorist attack deserved (terrorism = use of violence for political means, which this obviously was).
1) Those who are concerned with one specific problem and are demanding a resolution that is clear and to the point.
2) Anti-establishmentarians who hate everything* government/big business controlled who protest without a clear message or set of demands and would never be satisfied by any concessions the government/big business makes because they generally don't really care about the various and sometimes completely unatainable demands they make.
3) A mix of group 1 and 2. Groups that perhaps hate one particular organization and protest everything they do, regardless of what that is. Their demands, while often still unobtainable are usually more concise and are vocalized by more informed protesters. They can easily be confused with group 1, but can be spotted when they inevidably go off on tangents about unrelated issues (#2 is guilty of this as well, but they'll go off tangent on <b>completely</b> unrelated issues).
The majority of Olympic protests seem to be mostly 2 with some 3 and barely any 1. (An example of 1 would be the First Nations tribe in Quebec that demanded that the RCMP not escort the torch through their territory. Clear, to the point and easily rectified.)
*"Everything government/big business controlled" doesn't include big business/government that the group chooses to be ignorant about. Such as big companies selling products and marketing them in such a way that these anti-establishmentarians forget that they are buying shoes made by a multimillion dollar company.