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“Nowadays the fashionable morality is to move on whenever a malfeasance occurs.”
Rubin “Hurricane” Carter on quitting the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted after, he says, board members didn’t object strenuously enough to former Crown Susan MacLean’s appointment to the bench. MacLean prosecuted Guy Paul Morin, whose 1984 murder conviction, overturned on DNA evidence, was the case on which AIDWYC was founded.
Wiretap tax
Canada’s police chiefs want phone companies to add a 25 cent surcharge to phone and Internet bills to cover the costs of tapping into the communications of criminals. Scarier still is a proposal being considered by the feds that would require service providers to build into their systems the tech needed by cops and intelligence agencies to more easily tap into communications. Thankfully, Bell is dead set against the wiretap surcharge idea. Will someone tell the cops that invading privacy doesn’t come cheap.
Olympic branding gone loco
Spectators carrying food or drinks from non-sponsored brands into Olympic venues in Athens may be required to leave the items at the gate or be barred from the facilities. Fans wearing merchandise from sponsors’ rivals may be asked to conceal competing brand logos, perhaps by turning their shirts inside out. The so-called “clean venue policy” is aimed at protecting behemoths like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and VISA, which paid millions to be the main Olympic sponsors. One Olympics official, quoted in the UK-based Guardian, says, “Our overarching concern and desire is to keep the Games free of advertising or any commerce inside stadiums.” Of course, that doesn’t include the orgy of advertising on those running and jumping billboards also known as athletes.
Food bank’s virtual reality
The new reality at the Daily Bread Food Bank? It’s a virtual one. Demand for food is so far outstripping supply that the bank is now conducting a food drive over the Internet to raise enough money to buy groceries for the hungry until Thanksgiving. The new necessity is a scary one for Daily Bread to contemplate – this is the third year in a row it has had to appeal for donations to get through the summer. Online donations can be made at www.givegroceries.com.
