Monday, June 28, 2010

Ontario

Lots of coverage on the Real News about Ontario's Public Works legislation, as well as the events on the streets, as well as the events inside the G20. It would be a good idea to track this one and come back to it, rather than just letting it get away. It's a very wide-ranging, draconian law, and the other concurrent news stories about the Real News journalist and the other journalist are also very disturbing.

I am irritated and cynical about the fact that the events at big pre-planned protests seem to have no bearing on what happens afterwards, even in the direction of banality. I would hazard a guess that some of what Paul Jay was discussing with the civil liberties attorney/activist, either won't happen ("if they don't like the sunglasses you are wearing, they can arrest you..") or will happen in a spirit of colloidal suspension/breakout capability/fluoride, in tiny enough numbers as to go below the radar. Because part of big famous protests is kids who eventually go back to school, there is an attack-decay-sustain-release of the energy. So the outrage - Jay was LIVID in his editorial - possibly gets made diffuse, and they may actually get shit through without an outcry, because the use of the public works thing during normal times will seem a bit "normal" and banal, and people will be sleepy.

Of course there was a Black Bloc contingent, and of course the AP had a lede that said, "a group of people in black, broke away from the main protest, smashed windows," etc. The lede sounds extremely familiar- they've used it for Seattle, or the 2004 GOP convention in New York, various others. It's a sin of omission on the Associated Press' part, because the point of the Real News coverage was that people were unarmed, not in black, sitting down, and two phalanxes (?) of riot police closed in on them and told them to disperse in different directions. At which protest did this happen to Democracy Now people? Where Michael Isikoff goes, "I think she gets a followup.. she can ask her question as my question."

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