Rob Ford's Toronto

[DTGeek]

That said, I'm not sure how an ethical reporter can continue to cover someone with whom he is engaging in a lawsuit. Not that there have been a lot of consequences or acknowledgement of conflict of interest at city hall lately, but it does come to mind.

It's not like it matters any more whether a reporter is biased. Fords are such despicable sub-humans that I don't think Dale could even think of a way to portray them less fairly than the truth.

And as Dale wrote, in what practical sense is there any more of a conflict of interest now that he's filed a formal suit? He's a victim either way, the formalism couldn't imaginably change his motivations in any way.

 

[CowboyLogic]

cum hoc ergo propter hoc - a faulty assumption that correlation between two variables implies that one causes the other.

Ford supporters are not trolls by virtue of being Ford supporters - they are often exposed as trolls based on the lengths they must go to in order attempt to paint Ford in a positive light, or to deflect the issues, or just doing the drive-by sliming and sidestep we've see so recently.

I remember some months back, when debate shifted to a non-Ford topic in one of our periodic derailments, and I recall reading your logical, impassioned argument on the subject and thinking "Why can't he be that logical, intelligent and reasonable when it comes to the Fords?"

I simply don't think that's true, or at least my experience doesn't bear it. As I've mentioned before, I made a concerted effort to behave as reasonably and courteously as possible, as well as to respond to any and every point brought up against me. That included admitting when I was wrong and admitting when I disagreed with Ford. I don't think there are many people on here who admitted they were wrong as often as I did. From what I've seen of Peepers behavior, the same is true of him. He has posted several criticisms of Ford - in all honesty, he seems more anti-Liberal/anti-left than pro-Ford.

Besides possibly my posting now, I don't think anything I did could be construed as trollish behavior in the slightest. My experience has been that any pro-Ford poster will be criticized no matter what on here and accused of trollish behavior. In my own posting, I was often accused simultaneously of being longwinded and of ignoring the occasional poster. It was lose-lose, criticized no matter what. Similarly, I was lambasted for saying I personally didn't care if Ford smoked crack (back when this was still an allegation without any of the other criminal implications), but others got away with saying that Layton using an illicit sex parlor was the equivalent of buying Nestle coffee from Walmart.

There's a different set of standards applied to pro-Ford posters here, no matter how they behave or what they say. I'm not sure what exactly Peepers did to warrant being banned. I don't know the facts of this GAE incident and Id agree that you can harass someone using social media, but I don't see how his opinion is beyond the pale.

 

[GeekGirl]

Long-time reader, first-time poster - I added "Peepers" to my ignore list awhile back. Given the abysmal quality of his contributions to the discussion here, and in particular his current defence of misogynistic online harassment, I vote he be banned.

Agree, his comments in defence of harassment were reprehensible. Not a safe feeling, and as a woman he creeped me right out.

 

[FromTheHammer]

....but others got away with saying that layton using an illicit sex parlor was the equivalent of buying nestle coffee from walmart.....

troll alert...troll alert...troll alert

 

[Crazy]

Dale made the right decision. Ford's a bully, and knowing that the pedophile stuff bothered Dale was enough for him to keep repeating it, gleefully. This is the only way to shut him up.

 

[Forty Fs]

That said, I'm not sure how an ethical reporter can continue to cover someone with whom he is engaging in a lawsuit. Not that there have been a lot of consequences or acknowledgement of conflict of interest at city hall lately, but it does come to mind.

I don't think it's a conflict of interest for Dale to report on aspects of city hall business that don't involve this lawsuit or the events leading up to it. He's in a dispute with Ford personally, not Ford as mayor, and not the whole city government.

Anyway, as Edward Keenan noted, Dale hasn't been working on the crack story or the other stories relating to Ford's personal conduct. Every report I've seen under his byline lately has had to do with public appearances and public documents. His credibility isn't a major issue when everything he reports about Ford can be researched and verified so easily.

 

[SunriseChampion]

My dog has four legs, whiskers and a tail. My cat also has four legs, whiskers and a tail. Is my cat anything like a dog?

Well, actually, yes. You answered your own question, in fact.

If your question had been 'Is my cat the same as my dog?', then the answer would have been what you were looking for.

Just saying.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Dale made the right decision. Ford's a bully, and knowing that the pedophile stuff bothered Dale was enough for him to keep repeating it, gleefully. This is the only way to shut him up.

Except it won't shut him up. I'm now quite certain that only cutting his tongue out would achieve that, unfortunately.

 

[James_D]

Would Dale not have a libel case even without the pedophile insinuation? Ford has consistently lied and misrepresented the facts about the events and accused Dale of stalking, trespassing, invasion of privacy amongst other things. Are those not libelous claims in and of themselves?

I'm on board with Dale suing. I get that it helps bolster robbie's little victim narrative but at the same time I am so sick of seeing him allowed to be a belligerent, self-righteous bully without any consequence. Now, if only there was a way to name douggie in the same suit -- who is just as guilty as rob in perpetuating lie after lie -- that would be fantastic.

 

[pattycakes]

Would Dale not have a libel case even without the pedophile insinuation? Ford has consistently lied and misrepresented the facts about the events and accused Dale of stalking, trespassing, invasion of privacy amongst other things. Are those not libelous claims in and of themselves?

I'm on board with Dale suing. I get that it helps bolster robbie's little victim narrative but at the same time I am so sick of seeing him allowed to be a belligerent, self-righteous bully without any consequence. Now, if only there was a way to name douggie in the same suit -- who is just as guilty as rob in perpetuating lie after lie -- that would be fantastic.

Based on Doug's interview tonight where he repeated most of Rob's lies, I suspect he might be a co-defendant, sooner than later.

 

[Long Island Mike]

As someone else pointed out before, the 'British smile' phenomenon predated Thatcher by quite a long time and can be attributed to diet and a general reluctance to seek dental care, even though it was provided free at the point of delivery for most treatment. It's worth noting that the NHS was created in 1948 and for a time thereafter there was a sizable cohort of the population who had gone without dental care for some time before its introduction and continued to do so. My anecdotal experience is that many young people born in the '60 and '70s didn't visit the dentist unless absolutely necessary and/or didn't maintain good dental hygiene/diet. It didn't help that water generally wasn't fluoridated except in a few areas.

Thatcher didn't directly cut funding to the NHS but she did implement studies leading to reforms when it became apparent that the NHS was never going to be adequately funded to do everything it was mandated to do.

The story about Thatcher eliminating the supply of free milk to schoolchildren isn't entirely what it's usually reported: it was not her idea originally and she was in fact opposed to it, but went along with the decision made by the Treasury, in her capacity of Secretary of State for Education, before being elected PM.

What might be more germane to this thread in terms of local government is how Thatcher succeeded in eliminating London's unified municipal government: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_London_Council

TL: Thanks for this clarification about British health care and the Thatcher government...

I agree with the thought about how Thatcher abolished London's unified government - can the same happen
in the case of today's City of Toronto noting how that some citizens would like to see it eliminated?

LI MIKE

 

[SunriseChampion]

The interesting thing is that Mr Dale has given Ford six weeks to retract his statement. Maybe he will.


Hahaaaa, just kidding. Is Hotmail pro on this?

 

[k10ery]

No one will be hearing from Peepers for a while.

Thank you so much!

There are many other outlets for Peepers. UT is not one of them.

How wonderfully ironic that Peepers's posts about free speech got him banned from this board.

I think this is outrageous. I really value UT (and this thread in particular) and I agree with the majority opinion expressed here about most things. But I absolutely HATE the censorship policy of the mods and the mob mentality that supports this banning and many others like it in past.

I am posting the entirety of Peepers's recent posts below. As you can see, he did not attack anyone personally, he did not use abusive language, and he did not stray off topic (as far as we can define the topic of a discursive thread with nearly 40,000 posts). And, yes, he defended free speech as he sees it.

So, secretive Powers-That-Be, please tell us what he did to get banned.

I could tell you that Peepers brought us useful information about GAE and Ford, and that his skepticism about the motives of the TPS has been good conversation here in the past. I could even tell you that I disagree with most of what he has posted here. But none of that matters. He had a right to say what he did, and that right was abrogated.

I don't want to get banned myself or, worse, be accused of proving Godwin's Law. But yeah. "First they came for the Ford Nationals, and I didn't speak out..." So, Sean, please explain what happened here.

The rest of you UTers, come on. If the Ford boys tried to shut down dissent in a budget meeting along these lines, you'd be outraged. So stand up for free speech in your virtual world as well.

I found these tweets from Jonathon Goldsbie re his visit to the Ford Christmas Party intriguing:







Gregory Allan Elliott has been described as a "notorious twitter troll" who used to post tweets to the popular twitter hashtag #TOPoli until November 2012 when - in an early morning raid - Toronto Police descended upon his home and arrested him.

What was Greg Elliott's crime? He was charged with sending "unwanted tweets". Who knew you could be charged for sending "unwanted tweets"? Is there even such a thing (why sign up for twitter?).

This was a story that seemed right off the pages of "The Onion" except it wasn't funny - it was a terrible violation of free speech and an abuse of police powers. It was a story right out of the former Soviet Union.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/0...-troll-faces-new-criminal-harassment-charges/

It is interesting that the Mayor and GAE seem to be good friends. I wonder what the connection is there? I suppose one obvious connection now is Mayor Ford strongly believes that he is being persecuted by Bill Blair's police force and GAE is an actual victim of police persecution (the police officers involved in the arrest of GAE should be charged under the police act for filing bogus trumped-up charges and the feminist who made the complaint should be charged with public mischief).

You can read more about the GAE story here (as always the comments are much more informative then the tripe written by the "victims" girlfriend).

http://torontoist.com/2012/11/onlin...prevalent-and-taken-more-seriously-than-ever/

Why do you say he "clearly harassed women"? Have you seen his tweets? If not you can read them here: https://twitter.com/greg_a_elliott

What does it tell you that his account with over 50,000 tweets is still active? It tells you that nothing in his tweets constituted a threat or a violation of Twitter's terms of service. If his tweets were in any way threatening Twitter would not waste one minute disabling the account!

Notice the last day before he was lead out of his house in hand-cuffs he engages in a back-and-forth exchange with "@soapboxingreek (aka "Lady snarks alot). He calls her an "idiot" and says "Facebook has a lot more space for you and your criticism". He ends his back and forth exchange with a conciliatory "#PEACE".

The day after GAE arrest "@soapboxinggeek would contact the Toronto Police detective in charge via twitter:



Officer Bangild replied...................



So we have a woman who willingly engaged in a back and forth twitter exchange with GAE contacting Toronto Police to say she had been "harassed". Stop and think about how ridiculous a situation this is. This woman - whoever she is - should be charged with public mischief.

As for the "victim" what drove her to "fear for her life" and contact police is GAE had started using spamming using a hashtag she created after she blocked him. She said :



Would you go to police because someone started spamming a twitter group you created?

Stop and think about this. If police can break down you door and arrest you in a pre-dawn raid because you "spammed" a twitter group what freedom of speech do you have? I find it amazing that all of the "progressives" who piled on GAE have no clue that their own freedom's are being undermined every day.

Telephone communication is not the same thing as social media. If you make repeated harassing phone calls yes you will be given a restraining order and if you violate it you will be arrested.

Nobody needs to have a twitter account. If you don't want to see a tweet from someone you can a) block them b) don't search hashtags they use c) get off twitter.

If this nonsense actually holds up in our court of laws they might as well shut-down all social media and commenting sites like this one because the police will have their hands full arresting people every-time someone was "offended".

from yesterday's Star:



http://www.thestar.com/news/city_ha..._rob_ford_is_lying_about_me_and_its_vile.html

By "active" I meant it has not been disabled by Twitter which would have happened if his tweets were truly abusive. There is a guy on #TOPoli "the real Damany" who is always harassing people with racist tweets (e.g. calling the Toronto SUN's Lorrie Goldstein "a kike" and spamming @manuvsteele). His account usually get disabled by Twitter within hours (and he quickly creates new ones). Twitter will not put up with people making threats or using racial epithets. They are very strict in this way so I have to wonder what was considered "harassment"? Was Greg Allan Elliott saying "misogynist" things? OMG call the cops there is a misogynist on twitter!



I'm not sure what sites you are visiting but again regarding Twitter they have a zero tolerance policy for such things.




You're mixing up "victim's". The women who I said willingly engaged in a back and forth exchange with GAE is not the same woman who called 911 when GAE started spamming twitter using a hash-tag she created (OMG the horror! She must be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder by now).




People who cannot recognize that their rights to free speech are under attack undermine freedom. They don't know enough to stand-up and fight for their freedoms. And yes I know there are limits to free speech - you can't shout "fire" in a theater and you cannot incite violence but just about everything else is fair game in a truly free society.

You don't understand what free speech is.

Free Speech is the right to offend. Think about it. Speech that is inoffensive doesn't need protection.

DiGiorgio and Crawford showed up. The rest were party poopers.

 

[Long Island Mike]

The Stalin/Nazi stuff is an unproductive tangent/way off the mark. However, imagine how our lives would be in North America if Tea Party types gained political power in the States and were able to establish policy without needing to compromise, a 21st Century North American facist regime. Impossible, you might have thought. Yet Toronto and Ontario are supposed to be progressive places with highly educated populations and look who we elected mayor. And then, despite him being a disaster of every front, despite scandal worse than we might have predicted, despite losing the support of his peers and despite his shallow obvious lying and manipulation of the public, he continues to hold the office, continues to dominate all conversations, and threatens (although his chances are becoming more remote) to be re-elected. Despite it all, civic and business leaders haven't yet stood up to demand that Rob Ford go. We have a personality cult here, one that is energized by exploiting divisions in the population. Rob thinks he can become Prime Minister and Doug Premier. Democracy isn't looking that great around here. If these guys can succeed here it doesn't seem that impossible that in our lifetimes someone more malicious and maybe a little smoother could gain power in the more fractious and divided America. First thing, they'll be looking through everyone's Google history, so watch where you browse.

TZ: Interesting thoughts here about what could happen if the Tea Party right wing takes control of the US Federal Government...
I also am thinking about their "Divide and Conquer" mindset which could possibly affect politics in Canada in time...

LI MIKE

 

[Long Island Mike]

Agreed. It's an untenable position, and one I don't envy Dale for, whatever decision he ends up making: Either he takes Mayor Assclown to court and thus hands Ford another opportunity to yelp about how the media's out to get him, or he takes the so-called "high road," which will simply encourage Ford to keep slandering him every chance he gets. Which the rotten bastard's already doing, and will continue to do unless he's forced to cut it out. Bullies love picking on targets who don't fight back.

It's very easy for those of us acting as armchair quarterbacks here to urge Dale to undertake what will likely amount to an extremely ugly and lengthy and horribly unpleasant ordeal like dragging a sociopathic thug like Slob to the courts in search of justice, but honestly, I think it's the only way. It's all very well for those of us opposing the scumbag likes of Ford to stick our noses in the air and disdainfully sniff that there's no need to stoop to his level, but pushing back is the only language his kind understands. If Dale thinks a vindictive, thin-skinned brute like Ford is ever going to let this go without being made to, he's sadly mistaken.

This goes well beyond even the routine violations of common human decency we've come to expect from the Fords. The evil sack of shit smeared Dale as a pedophile, for Christ's sakes, and this after assaulting the man, stealing his phone, and lying about the encounter to the police. There are some accusations you just don't throw around like schoolyard taunts, and here Ford is, already repeating the vile slur to the American media. If Dale wants an end to this, he's going to have to take steps himself to see it done.

JD: Good thoughts here - I read up on this confrontation and I feel that Toronto Star reporter Dan Dale has every right to sue
Rob Ford for slander and defamation of character in light of his accusations of being a pervert especially since the TPD was also
involved and had to decide whether to file charges...

I am also thinking that a lawsuit filed by Mr. Dale could lead to what could be a form of all-out war between the Toronto Star and
Mayor Rob Ford and his supporters...This could get rough...

LI MIKE