The Grumpy Owl

Is Rob Ford a fat fuck or is he just fucking fat?

Rob Ford squints at the world through little swine eyes while wearing novelty ties.  In a panicked, squealing falsetto, he says things like:  ”I can’t support bike lanes. Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it’s their own fault at the end of the day.”  He thinks “orientals” are “slowly taking over.” He gets so drunk and shouts so many insults that he stands out at the hockey game.  He gets charged with assaulting and making death threats against his wife.  Most recently, it turns out he was caught with a joint in Florida and has just said about immigrants: “Right now we can’t even deal with the 2.5 million people in this city. I think it is more important to take care of people now before we start bringing in more people.”  He stands a decent chance at being Toronto’s next mayor.

It’s hardly surprising.

A lot of people say those sorts of things and some of them actually believe them.

The good news is that you’ll never hear Rob Ford say: “Let them eat cake.”  You will, however, hear him say, “I have no idea where the cake went.  Really you left it there?  Nope, never saw it.”  And then he’ll wipe some icing off his chins.

"My dinner was this big."

Though often portrayed as being a right winger, Rob Ford is not any sort of winger.  Wings require flapping and flapping is a lot  like exercise.  Rather, he is a radical populist and a demagogue.  He panders to the bigotries of the common man and pretends such pandering is policy.  He presents no conservative theory of government or economics and his appetite for bon-bons is best described as liberal.

His comment “I think it is more important to take care of people now before we start bringing in more people” is about as far away from any genuine conservatism as you can get.  He seems to think the government should be taking care of people.  That it should be in charge of bringing people in.  That it should act as a brutal nanny enforcing the prejudices of the populace while rewarding its worst instincts.  Probably with ice-cream cake.  If there’s any left.

Mr Ford’s comments would make more sense if they were about the food on his table.  “I think it’s important that we take care of this steak before we bring in seconds and dessert” would be a sensible policy.  It’s probably not one he has ever believed in.

He explains his remarks and describes his perfect world thus: “I’m going to play the cards that I’m dealt and you know what? More people will come. But in a perfect world, what I’m saying is that I would like to deal with the 2.5 million first.” His goal is not smaller government but a government that deals with each of its citizens just like he deals with each of his fries.

I do not want to deal with the government.  I wish it did not deal with me. Like Rob Ford, the government is a fat fuck.

I’m married to an immigrant from America who brought herself in.  We do not need the government to take care of us.  We need it it to get out of our way and allow us to build our life together.   We just want to make some money and buy some shit.  Right now, our greatest obstacle to doing either is the government.  If someone wants to work and can get a job, they should be allowed to.  This does not steal jobs – it makes them.  The free movement of people and goods does not damage the economy – it is the economy.

Unlike Mr. Ford, whose job is paid for by my tax dollars, we do not intend to suck at the government’s teat.  From the looks of him, that milk is fattening, from the sound of him, it addles the senses.  Frankly, I hope the man is hit by a car.  Or I would, if the collision would not do so much damage to the car.  In the meantime, he should just sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up.

That is, if he can find a chair large enough to support him.

Tags: conservatism, crime, fat fuck, immigrants, rob ford, toronto

As I take people like Oscar Wilde, Cicero and Friedrich Reck-Malleczenwen as my models of political dissent, I think it’s important to remember that even in horrible times, especially then, beauty, dignity and basic human decency are of paramount importance.  Although they are the first things to become improbable, you must never allow your better parts to become impossible.  So, as counterpoint to the barbarity of the weekend, I’m collecting some images of myself in some nice bloody suits.  Because this is an image heavy post, there’s a jump.  So, if you want to see more, jump!

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Tags: anarcho-dandyism, dandarchism, dandy, G20, style, toronto

It’s Canada Day and I usually like to mark the occasion with some flag vandalism, a rant against the nation state in general and this one in particular, and then spend the next six months sifting through a selection of insults, threats and various other comments.  I’m not in the mood this year.

Usually, my Canada Day post is a visceral  reaction to the idiotic, nationalistic exceptionalism that most Canadians feel.  They think this country is so much better, so much more free and so much more egalitarian than any other place on earth. Just like people do on any other place on earth.

This year, in Toronto at least, where white folks got a tiny taste of how Canada treats so many other people both here and abroad, not many people are feeling like that.

They want to.  I can sense this.  And I’m not one to kick my enemy when he’s down.  Not unless he’s trying to get back up.

So let me just slip one to the ribs here.

I’ll be attending today’s protest to have an independent inquiry into the events of the weekend (hopefully by Amnesty International) and I fully expect to hear the protesters singing the national anthem.  It’s not a practice I’m ever comfortable with but now, after that nation spent a drunken weekend chasing people about with sticks and on a day when our taxes are being raised, it now seems especially ludicrous to gather together and sing its praises.  But people will.

They want their rudely shattered delusion back in place.
These post-summit protests are an exercise in reassurance.  Many seem to feel heartbroken about the events of the weekend.  They feel like their boyfriend has broken up with them and now they don’t know what to do.  Mainly, they want everything back to normal.  This urge for a return to status quo is called reactionaryism.  They’re not terribly concerned that it was the status quo that created this situation in the first place.  They simply think: If you just stop drinking, everything can be like it was before! They want the police chief to resign.  A scapegoat.

As if any other police chef on the the planet would have handled things differently.

I can’t really blame them.  Change and loneliness is a frightening situation, especially for those who are dependent on the state for their livelihood.  The people are much like a battered housewife.  They want the husband to stop beating them, desire a return to a happier time and, lacking any self-esteem, are now eager to believe any Sunday morning apology they might get.  Yet it’s a dysfunctional relationship.  We saw an expression of that dysfunction –not its cause– over the weekend.  Our hubby, the state, might promise to quit drinking but can we believe him?  Has he earned our belief?

I don’t believe he has.

And yet, while I will not condemn black bloc tactics as their violence is nothing when measured against that of nations, I cannot ever endorse anyone ever purposely breaking something they cannot rebuild.  If you cannot install a window, you have no business breaking one.  Smashing is the easiest and most meaningless aspect of anarchism.  If we are ever going to leave the state behind, we must do the hard work and form better systems.  We must make ourselves less dependent on it so that we can leave.  Conflict will then arise, to be sure, but it will be on our home turf, not theirs, and we will have something to protect.  We need to be independent.

The first step, I suppose, is admitting that you have a problem.

That you might be suffering from a carefully cultivated Stockholm Syndrome.

I know the bulk of this city will accept the flowers and apology, then talk itself back into the lie, probably within the month, but I also know that some of you won’t.  I would urge those ones not to turn to the smashing of things but to the building of them.  We are hostages and breaking the dishes, while satisfying in the short-term, will accomplish nothing.  We need an escape plan and place to go to.  That is where we need to direct our energy.  Not towards politics but towards removing them from our lives.

Tags: canada day day, G20, toronto

The guardians of the state.

On the twitter, I’ve recently heard many people declare that “Toronto has become a police state.”  If you’ve said something along those lines, you need to take a deep breath.  You are only experiencing clarity.  It will pass.

Canada has been a police state for years.  Over the weekend, we just saw how a police state handles protest.  In other words, the police state on a bad day.  The only reason the police did not use live ammunition is because they didn’t need to.   Had there been half a million people in the street, if there had of been a real threat, the police would have used real bullets.  They did not because they were never threatened enough to risk the optics.  As their overreaction and their indiscriminate application of power proved, they are not interested in any sort of fair fight.  and when you looked up, you saw snipers.  Just what do you think those people are for?  They’re for you and me.  To shoot us with bullets we paid for.

Did you ever think our government would act any differently than the Iranian regime if too many people took to the street?  When power is threatened, life is cheap.

The only difference between Canada and any other police state is that Canadians are remarkably compliant.  Why shouldn’t they be?  They are the benefactors of this sort of behavior and much worse all over the world.  For the most part, they enjoy the police state.  Love it even.  Some, like Albert Speer, simply prefer to avoid looking too hard at it.  Most Canadians will never face up to what this country truly is: they will not acknowledge its wars, it genocides and its oppressions.  It easier to believe in the lie.

From cradle to grave, we’ve all been lied to.  We’ve been told things like Alexander Graham Bell was a Canadian, that we are a nation of peacekeepers and that we are, always and without doubt, the good guys.  It’s not true.  We’re not.  Here is where we see the delusion conflicting with the reality.  And the reality wins.

The police state is not what happened on the weekend.  It is what allowed that weekend to happen in the first place.  It is what you’re returning to this Monday.  Maybe you enjoy living in a totalitarian regime – many people have– and perhaps you even actively endorse it – many have done that too.  Everyone who doesn’t, however, needs to take a deep breath.  You are only experiencing clarity.  It will pass.  A meaningless report will be made, perhaps a futile inquiry will be drag into boredom and increase our tolerance for the images that now shock us, a few reporters will be upset that their rights were violated and you will get your crumb from the table.

You will be returned to your regular programming.  A celebrity will do something and your pleasant fog will be back in no time.

Tags: canada, G20, toronto

Tags: canada, g20. toronto, protest, queen's park, riot cops

Peaceful G20 protest at Queen & Spadina from Meghann Millard on Vimeo.

Peaceful protesters sing Canada’s national anthem, riot police respond with force.

Tags: G20, protest, toronto

A wonderful Saturday afternoon in the park wrecked by impertinent civil servants.

In all the hub-bub about burning police cars and smashed up Tim Hortons, we’ve missed something rather important: Our police officers are impolite.  Forget enforcing the rule of law, many of these “gentlemen” do not even subscribe to the rules of manners.

Just today, I was in Queen’s Park with the wife and there was rather a lot of these fellows.  Apparently, they wanted us to leave.  I have no idea why as they never gave me a reason.  Instead of approaching us like reasonable adults and offering us an umbrella (it was raining – serve and protect)  they charged towards us, banging shields and beating the snot out of whomever they could find.  I have not seen behavior of that order since my Nan was healthy.  To top things off, they kept riding about on their horses, never thinking to bring a pony for the children.

They hogged the horses, allowing no one else to ride or even stroke these magnificent beasts.

Had they bothered to find out, they might have discovered that my wife was new to this country and they were giving her a rather bad impression of it.  When I had my photo taken with them, only one responded to my request that they say cheese.  The others were a real bunch of sourpusses.

From what I’ve heard, they’ve spent much of the weekend acting like this.  They’ve built fences all over town, tore up all sorts of trees, closed down the subway system and then tried to blame all of this on “anarchists.”  I’d like to know when exactly we started allowing anarchists to run our public transport.  Or the police for that matter.

Trying to understand the sudden shift in police attitude towards me. Did I offend them? Are they racist? Just what is their problem?

And I hate to accuse the police of racism when they have so much reason to hate every race in this city, but I feel I must.  For yesterday, I walked around the security fences with a white girl (Danielle from Final Fashion) and the police acted like decent human beings.  They smiled, said hello and good day, answered me when I asked them how they were doing and were altogether pleasant.  But today, when I went to the park with my black wife, they completely ignored me and then came chasing after the pair of us with shields and truncheons.  If that’s not racist, I don’t know what is.

If a waiter acted that way, the man would be sacked.

The amusing thing about all this is how deeply the police object to their being any weapons at a protest.  I recall a protest their union held a while ago where a bunch of them showed up wearing guns at City Hall and none of them even faced job discipline.  Considering that, it seems indecent to object to sticks or whatever these people carry to fight men with guns.  And they also dislike masks but almost every officer of the law I saw today wore one.  They also carried more bondage equipment than one of the G20 delegate’s whores.

It's not always easy to keep smiling when people are acting badly but it is quite rude to point out their poor manners. You must assume they know no better.

Really, the police and black bloc should find a nice little thunderdome where they can fight all this out with the same weapons.  If they cannot agree on a proper duel, they could at least settle this dispute with a softball game.  That way, the rest of us could go about our business like the peaceful, more or less decent folks we are.  Uninterrupted by the elite, their cops or any window breaking.

And while I long ago gave up on people like this holding to the rule of law, is it too much to hope that they hold to the rule of manners?  Or can we really expect worse behavior from our police than we can a child at the dinner table?  If that’s the case, perhaps we should get them their own little table.  Until they grow up.

Tags: anarcho-dandyism, dandarchism, G20, toronto

G20 T-Dot from Ryan Oakley on Vimeo.

A short video about the G20 Summit (Copstock) in Toronto featuring never before seen footage of my sock.

Tags: action, drama, excitement, G20, riot cops, toronto, video

Tags: G20, riot cop, toronto

Tags: fake lake, G20, toronto

g20-fortress-new.jpg (1000×1663).

Tags: G20, map, toronto

Recipes For Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook: Download as PDF

Not sure if I’m breaking any laws by distributing this book, but if I am, it’s probably a good idea to say I don’t condone any of the practises in it.  Not even the nice ones or the stuff about turning a bike into a record player. As if saying that would make any difference anyway.  It’s an interesting read and, with the upcoming G20 summit, it seems topical.

So yeah, fuck it, I do condone these practises.

What I refuse to condone is the police state completely fucking up my city for no good reason. I refuse to condone these G20 motherfuckers wrecking Roy Halladay’s homecoming.  How the hell are you supposed to be on their side when they pull some shit like that?  I would sooner seem any manner of obscenity visited upon our dear PM than see Roy get a blister on his finger.

I’d also like to suggest some tactics.

During the revolt in Hungary, the people used quite a bit of deception against the oppressive Soviet forces.  Lacking mines or, at least, many real ones, they used plenty of dupes which the Soviets had to treat as real, thus using up energy, diverting their tanks and often being led into ambushes.  Deception is always an effective tactic.  Even more so when you are outnumbered and out-gunned. Responding to the imaginary interferes with your enemy’s ability to respond to the real.

And no one is easier to fool than a paranoid.

Is our state paranoid? I’d say so.  I mean, look how it responds to unauthorized blinking lights.

As much as it hates unlicensed blinking lights, it really seems to hate suspicious white powder.  Any white powder in the context of a protest is suspicious.  If I was the sort of person to be out there throwing rocks –and I’m not– I would think about bags of flour instead.  A rock will merely bounce off a well-armoured policeman.  But flour?  I’m betting white powder occasions an evacuation and a trip to the doctor.  They really overreact to white powder.  Just ask Steven Paige.

And I’m not advocating throwing a bunch of flour around.  It’d be a shame to see something that can used to bake bread being weaponized; that is, wasted.  An obscenity actually.  But this whole situation seems pretty obscene anyway.

You should also be warned – I’m pretty sure you’d be breaking a whole bunch of laws by doing that and it’s not like I’m going to show up in court for you or hire you a lawyer or any shit.  So it’s up to your own best judgement.  As always.

Tags: anarchism, anarchist cookbook, aranarchy, crimethInc, G20, tactics, toronto

Compare the security cost of Canada’s G8 and G20 summits to those in other countries.

Almost a billion dollars to protect the leaders from the people they lead.

There is a problem here.

Tags: cost, G 20, G 8, summit, toronto

Thank you Toronto Transit Commission.

There’s few things I enjoy more than basking in the warm glow of ambient hatred. I don’t know how you did it but you’ve now managed to create an utterly adversarial relationship between yourself and the people of Toronto.

(I know exactly how you did it to me.)

Even though your last four fare hikes (aka tax on poor workers)  were insane, it looks like you’ve finally dropped the fateful straw on the camel’s back.  And the people of Toronto, normally so compliant, have finally turned on you.  They’re snapping pictures while you sleep and you blame them for not waking you up.  They’re filming your extended breaks and you’re yelling at people with cameras.

Good for you TTC!

I had given up all hope that the people of Toronto would ever resist anything.  You’ve restored my faith in them.

And please go on strike.  That would be the perfectly wrong thing to do.  I expect no less.

Toronto has recently been panicked by a mathematical anomaly.  In the month of January, fourteen pedestrians in the GTA  (seven in Toronto) were killed by cars.   Proving that the state will always do the exact wrong thing, the police have now cracked down on jaywalking.

I spend a lot of time walking in this city of ours and I’ve almost been hit by cars plenty of times.  It’s not because I jaywalk.  I very rarely do.  Jaywalking is a lot like nose-picking.  You should do it when it’s worse not to.  I’ll jaywalk when its the safer option or when the roads are abandoned.

I don’t do it out of convenience or rushing.

And, just like nose-picking, jaywalking has some health benefits.  Especially when you live near an intersection as dangerous and accident-prone as mine.

Although I dislike jaywalking, I’m not some big booster of traffic lights.  They should be abolished.  It’s dangerous and moronic to put your faith in some machine that other people are supposed to obey.  Red lights are being run all the time.  (I saw it twice yesterday and once today, while out doing my laundry.)  And you only need to be hit once.

I’m a big booster of looking both ways before I cross.

Because you have to fucking aware out there.  It’s not good enough to replace your judgement with a series of flashing lights like some sort of lab rat in a cheese dispensing test.  You have to look both ways.  And if you see a cop, it’s best not to jaywalk.  Unless you can handle the sanctimonious speech and ticket.

I can’t.

Because not only are they giving tickets, they’re also delivering lectures like a bunch of god-damn street corner Christians.   And adults are just standing there, listening to this? What are we?  Misbehaving children?  Our society is pretty fucked up when this terror of the police is normal.

There’s no need to police jaywalking.  There’s not even a need for a jaywalking law.  Jaywalking polices itself and it’s governed by two laws:  Those of physics and that of natural selection.  If a person can’t take one of those into account, they’ll quickly obey the other.  And the sort of person who can ignore physics and/or self preservation is unlikely to be impressed by fifty dollar tickets.

As that old Christian Anarchist,  Ammon Hennacy, once said: “Oh, judge, your damn laws: the good people don’t need them and the bad people don’t follow them, so what good are they?”  They’re no fucking good at all.

pic nicked from here