Lessons for Project Samosa
By Alison@Creekside
The publication ban on Project Samosa, the RCMP’s latest salvo in the war on terror, has the media scrambling to get unnamed sources and security experts to augment and substitute for accounts of court proceedings. By a happy coincidence for war on terror fans, this allows for far more pants-pissingly terrorfying conjecture than mere [...]
What did Wiebo Ludwig do?
By Alison@Creekside
I don’t claim to be any kind of authority on Wiebo Ludwig — for that you can read Andrew Nikiforuk’s Saboteurs — but in all the considerable coverage of Ludwig’s arrest in connection with six cases of explosions on EnCana’s gas pipelines, I notice the media’s accompanying history of Ludwig makes no mention [...]
“That was totally useless. Thankyou.”
By Alison@Creekside
On Thursday, reporters doggedly tried to wring from Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan exactly how long he withheld the RCMP’s Firearms Commissioner’s Report in favour of keeping the long-gun registry so that MPs would not have that info prior to passing the bill to scrap it. The report was released two days after [...]
Olympics: Celebrate or else
By Alison@Creekside
An enthusiastic supporter of the Beijing Olympics who posted his photos online at Flickr under a creative commons licence – which allows anyone to use them for free with attribution – received a cease and desist letter from International Olympic Committee lawyers:
“Images of the Games taken by you may not be used for any [...]
The Muldoon and The Oliphant
By Alison@Creekside
“The time has come,” the Oliphant said,“To talk of many things:Of envelopes stuffed with wads of cashAnd if they came with strings –Perhaps you only beat the rapBecause the pigs were schwings*.”
“But wait a bit,” the Muldoon cried,“Before we have our chat;I have complaints to make,” he said,“Regarding Steve the Fat.”“No Hurry,” said the [...]
Don’t ask, don’t know
By Alison@Creekside
Big hullaballoo following CSIS lawyer Geoffrey O’Brian’s testimony before the public safety committee, in which he said that Canadian intelligence agencies would make use of information obtained by torture from foreign agencies in the “one-in-a-million” eventuality that “lives were at stake.” In fact, said O’Brian, who has been with CSIS since its inception in [...]
Dziekanski’s deadly stapler
By guest blogger Alison@Creekside
Staples?
That’s your defence — staples?
That there was the possibility of staples?
You RCMP lawyers have fucking lost it.
Millions watched four RCMP zap Robert Dziekanski within seconds of meeting him, kneel on his upper body till he was dead, and then stand around making no attempt to revive him.We heard the immediate RCMP spin [...]
A load of fertilizer
By guest blogger Alison@Creekside
Remember this? Sure you do.
It was back in June 2006, coincidentally two weeks before the vote on whether or not to let the Canadian Anti-Terror Act expire, that the RCMP sold a load of fertilizer to two CSIS moles embedded in a Muslim outdoor club, had it delivered to a warehouse rented [...]
Tasering the news
By Frank Moher
I recently advised two former journalism students of mine, one working on an article for Chatelaine, the other on a feature for this magazine, that they couldn’t offer money to an interviewee, even though in both cases the interviewee could really use it. That, I explained, is called “chequebook journalism.” And it’s not [...]
Note to true-crime writers: Watch your backs
By guest blogger Brian Brennan
The Robert William Pickton murder trial has started in New Westminster Supreme Court with 350 media types from around the world accredited to cover the case. Most of these reporters — including two former Vancouver prostitutes blogging for the so-called “citizen journalism” website, orato.com — are filing for same-day or next-day [...]
