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The photo in question depicts a hand-drawn image of Ian Lafrenière with a gunshot wound to the head flanked by the words “Ian Lafrenière” and “ACAB” — a popular graffiti acronym that stands for “all cop[per]s are bastards.”
April 5, 2013
"Montreal artist Jennifer Pawluck, 20, was arrested yesterday morning after posting a photo of a piece of anti-police street art..."
"'I was walking around the neighborhood. My friend told me to look and I took a photo of it,' Pawluck said. 'I never made any threat or anything, so I don't really regret it. They're the ones who freaked out.' But Montreal police doesn't take Instagram uploads lightly: 'All I can say is that a person has been arrested for making threats on the internet,' said police spokesperson Dany Richer."
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29 comments:
Free speech in Canada? Seriously.
These sorts of arrests can usually be made tactfully by the Community Outreach Divison.
In the USA? Laughed out of court. In Canada? I'm not so sure.
Marc Steyn is not surprised
Art? Bull. That's nothing but a crappy paper rendering, copied maybe dozens of times, poorly pasted upon a block wall.
Welcome to Canada...where the police sometimes only warn you once. Try talking back to an OPP sometime...write us about it when you get out.
If the character with the bullet hole was black (say, the black police chief of Madison), it would be investigated as a hate crime here. Maybe it's just splitting hairs when comparing our freedom of speech to Canada's.
MadisonMan said...
In the USA? Laughed out of court. In Canada? I'm not so sure.
The problem isn't just the court adjudication. This is political intimidation even if she wins in court. It's outrageous.
Turns out Canada doesn't actually have free speech rights.
Canadians often think they have more liberty than Americans.
They're wrong, every time I've seen.
The Charter saying "Everyone has the right to [...] free expression" hasn't ever managed to protect them, has it?
(At least "Congress shall pass no law..." has an actual restriction on the State in it.)
Such restrictions on speech here would make Obama happy, but they would be far to free for most university speech codes? How would that match up to the Wisconsin code?
http://thefire.org/article/11950.html
In the US, the FBI also investigates graffiti.
Call in Bertrand Russell.
They're confusing use and mention.
The "artist" in question is linked with a violent student movement that, last spring, did things like smoke bomb our subway system. There were other examples of the student movement being "artists" depicting violent deaths on politicians and civic representatives who acted in accordance with their duties.
If this was joe schmoe artist, no one would bat an eye.
I think the US-parallel (e.g., someone promiting death to American police officers from a radical jihaddist perspective) would get the same/similar treatment.
Where's the guy who made the movie that got "Egypt enflamed"? Wasn't he arrested?
The police would perhaps be justified in asking where the offending grafitti was located so that the City could paint it over.
No way are they justified in arresting a citizen taking a photo of it, regardless of what that person's reputation with them might be otherwise.
Montreal is in Quebec, which probably has extensive self-government privileges and follows the Napoleonic Code. I do not think this would fly in the English-speaking provinces.
The poor sucker that made the infamous video is quite another matter. The State Dept. had him railroaded all right, but on other charges, which are real enough and not connected to the video.
Otherwise, vide Bill and Bernardine Ayers, Kathy Boudin, and their associates, past and present.
"Where's the guy who made the movie that got "Egypt enflamed"? Wasn't he arrested?"
Why, yes. Yes he was.
But they at least had to get a fig-leaf of some other charge to put on the court docket. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)
I am not sure this person has been charged or any charges will be pursued.
I can certainly understand why this rankles from a civil liberties perspective.
I only responded because there was a string of "only America is truly free" type stuff which is generally unnecessarily hostile towards Canada and maybe a bit blinkered.
That whole, "Congress shall make no law...", stuff really is important.
That's why unreconstructed Confederates and community organizers hate it so.
Hagar said...
Otherwise, vide Bill and Bernardine Ayers, Kathy Boudin, and their associates, past and present.
Is it me or has Columbia U turned into an Old Folks Home for domestic terrorists?
PBS - of all people - made a documentary on The Weatherman, back in the '80s, I think, and as I remember it, all of the interviewees were employed at a university somewhere, except Mark Rudd, who expressed strong doubts about what they had done in the '70s, and so had to be content with a lowly position as math instructor a the Albuquerque T-VI.
Tarkwell Robotico said...
The "artist" in question is linked with a violent student movement that, last spring, did things like smoke bomb our subway system. There were other examples of the student movement being "artists" depicting violent deaths on politicians and civic representatives who acted in accordance with their duties.
If this was joe schmoe artist, no one would bat an eye.
These are not mitigating facts. These facts prove the arrest was political intimidation.
"In the USA? Laughed out of court."
Don't feel so certain of that. After all, the implementation of the police state is underway here, as well.
"That whole, "Congress shall make no law...", stuff really is important."
The trouble with going hard-core on the text is it has no weight outside of the zone bound by the text.
You need better arguments to reach even as far as Canada.
French Canadians. That explains the entire matter.
French Canadians. That explains the entire matter.
They really should change that to "MCAB".
You know you're over-thinking your homework when the first question this makes you ask is whether, if the original artist came forward, s/he would have an enforceable claim under Canadian law of copyright infringement against the photographer.
"...except Mark Rudd, who expressed strong doubts about what they had done in the '70s, and so had to be content with a lowly position as math instructor a the Albuquerque T-VI".
I had known about this and it made me strangely proud in a very weird way that *our* ex-Weatherman teaching the next generation wasn't teaching an ideological subject, but was teaching Math.
I believe he's retired now, though.
Best comment I've seen yet: "Print a hundred t-shirts with the instagram image and sell it to tourists and online to raise funds for a civil case.
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