Saturday, February 29, 2020

Why Portland Police Stand By Passively When Leftists Riot, Andy Ngo



This is the Portland Police Bureau. Stop throwing things at officers," blasted the command from the Portland, Oregon, police bureau's "LRAD" sound system in downtown Portland earlier this month. "If it continues, this event will be declared a civil disturbance."

In response, the crowd of several hundred left-wing protesters—many of them masked—laughed and chanted, "ACAB! All cops are bastards!" A group of them continued to hurl projectiles like rocks, concrete and food at police. Some vehicles driving by had incendiary devices thrown at them. A nearby war memorial was vandalized with antifa symbols and messages urging people to "kill cops." Videographers at the scene were attacked and chased away for filming.

Police made only three arrests.

The protest by antifa in Portland on Feb. 8, organized to counter alleged Ku Klux Klan members who never showed up, received little media attention. And why should it? In a city where riots have become a banality, citizens and the local media have understandably become numb. But outsiders, particularly conservatives, responded in disbelief and anger online that a police department in a major American city seemingly permits left-wing political violence to become routine.

So what is the matter with Portland police? Videos recorded in the city since 2016 have highlighted instances of chaos where marauders appear to take over the streets, stop traffic, assault people and damage property with impunity. Frequently, police officers are recorded standing back and watching the criminal acts from a safe distance.

Much of the reaction from the right, all the way up to President Donald Trump, has been directed at Mayor Ted Wheeler, who also doubles as the police commissioner. On numerous occasions, the mayor has publicly politicized the police department, and at times appeared to legitimize far-left protesters. In summer 2018, Wheeler allegedly prohibited Portland police from responding to a siege of the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office by hundreds of protesters. The facility was shut down for a week. The union representing ICE employees sent formal letters to both the U.S. and Oregon attorney generals asking them to conduct a criminal investigation into Wheeler's conduct. In response, the mayor defended the city's inaction, saying it was necessary to protect the free speech of protesters who opposed the administration's border security policies.

While Wheeler has borne the brunt of public criticism about Portland police's "laissez-faire" approach to crowd control, interviews with those at the PPB reveal that Portland's problems with violent protests stem not from the inadequate leadership of any one person, but systemic and pervasive factors affecting police, government and the city itself.

One viral video recorded by a local YouTuber at the protest earlier this month fueled the perception that police are given "stand down" orders. After being chased by a group of black-clad protesters, the cameraman runs up the steps of the Multnomah County Justice Center, where a police officer tells him: "We're not going to come out and save you."

Both police and the mayor have denied that there is any order for officers to "stand down" at protests. Instead, the PPB clarifies that they won't "provide private security for individuals or groups." It appears that they will intervene only if they witness imminent, serious bodily injury. This has all but provided a blueprint for extremists to know how to avoid being arrested in the presence of police. In the past year, they have been observed using easily concealable weapons that can be quickly deployed, like pepper spray and collapsible batons, rather than bats, shields and large sticks.

But even small batons can be potentially deadly. In June 2019, Gage Halupowski was one of the rioters who rushed in to beat Adam Kelly as he attempted to help a man who was being kicked and punched in a riot. According to the probable cause affidavit, police observed Halupowski delivering a "full overhead swing that struck the top of Kelly's head from behind." Kelly suffered a concussion and required 25 staples to close the wounds to his head. Halupowski, a masked 24-year-old antifa militant, was the only person arrested and convicted for that attack outside Portland's Pioneer Courthouse.

A Portland police officer who spoke with Newsweek on condition of anonymity, who has been on the force for over a decade and has worked on the Rapid Response Team of many violent protests, said the public should not blame individual officers who may appear passive on video. At protests, he says, police are organized into squads and they are permitted to act only with permission from the incident command center, a room normally set up in the central police precinct where the incident commander and others provide critical step-by-step instructions on how to respond at protests. He says that all decisions to act—or not act—come from above, often leading to real-time delays during critical moments of violence.

"Breaking away to respond to a single incident," the officer says, "can put the squad and public at risk." But he says the PPB also simply doesn't have the resources to adequately control large protests. Danielle Outlaw, Portland's police chief until recently, admitted as much in a podcast interview last August.

"I've been asked, 'Well, why isn't that you can't handle these events like New York does or how Boston or Chicago would do,'" she said. "The obvious answer is, we don't have the thousands of officers that those agencies do."

The PPB has been suffering critical staffing shortages for the past few years—something the president of the Portland Police Association blames on the city and its elected government.

"The reason the Police Bureau is experiencing catastrophic staffing shortages, drastically declining recruiting success, and the inability to retain officers is due to one core issue: the intense anti-police sentiment in our city that City Council seems to share," Daryl Turner said in April 2019 statement.

This is not the only time Turner has sparred with the city government. After a riot in June 2019, in which this reporter was one of several injured, Turner released a statement saying: "It's time for our Mayor to do two things: tell both ANTIFA and Proud Boys that our City will not accept violence in our City, and remove the handcuffs from our officers and let them stop the violence through strong and swift enforcement action. Enough is enough."

Turner did not respond to Newsweek requests for comment about PPB policies.

After the height of protests in Portland in 2018, the PPB have undertaken a noticeably more passive policing framework for protests, despite the mayor telling reporters last summer after a riot, that the city may reconsider its lax enforcement of non-permitted protests. That reconsideration does not seem to have happened, based on the policies currently outlined in the city's directive on crowd control. The directive places emphasis on "de-escalation" and "self-monitoring" as a means of managing potentially violent protests.

"[PPB members] will strive to maintain a diplomatic presence to dissuade participants from engaging in civil disturbance and to encourage crowd self-monitoring," the directive states. "The preferred police response is one of crowd management rather than crowd control." In fact, passive policing at violent demonstrations has become a point of pride for the PPB. At the first public panel on demonstrations last year, key decision-makers in the PPB said they instruct officers to leave the area of a demonstration if their presence is considered an "agitation" to protesters.

"If we identify that we might be the problem, that we might be the agitation there, we will remove ourselves physically from [the protest] to try to de-escalate," Captain Craig Dobson said. Wendi Steinbronn, who was the incident commander for various protests throughout 2018–19, nodded eagerly in agreement.

A spokesperson for the mayor's office emailed Newsweek a statement saying that Wheeler's instructions to the PPB have always been to maintain "public safety, upholding/protecting first amendment rights, protecting property, and keeping the city moving." However, Wheeler refused to support the police chief's proposals last July when she asked the city to enhance charges against mask-wearers who commit crimes, as well as giving police the directive to videotape demonstrations.

Seventy-five year-old Kent Houser, a lifelong Portland resident, has been one of the most vocal critics of the mayor. In October 2018, Houser was driving a silver sedan that was mobbed and attacked by left-wing protesters in downtown Portland. Police did not intervene. Video of the incident, which showed people using batons to smash his vehicle, was shown on Fox News and conservative media.



"The mayor's office can make all the statements for public consumption," Houser told Newsweek. "This does not correlate in any way with the sad facts of the 'stand down' situation which existed at that time, and hopefully, no longer will be tolerated." Shaun Clancy, 37, was arrested and charged with felony first-degree criminal mischief for his alleged role in the incident last November, more than a year after the attack occurred. Police found weapons in his possession, including a stun gun with an antifa sticker. He faces trial at the end of March.

Even as Portland's population has grown dramatically in the last decade, police numbers have been stagnant or in decline at around 900 full-time sworn officers on the force. Efforts at lowering recruitment standards—such as dropping the two-year college degree requirement and allowing beards and tattoos—haven't yielded enough recruits. This February, the PPB disbanded two street-crimes policing units due to staffing shortages. Forty-seven officers retired last year, around five percent of the force, and another round of retirements is set to take place in August.

To address resource shortages in the past, the PPB has relied on help from other police departments, both state and local, to provide additional officers. But many of those long-standing mutual aid partnerships have ended in acrimony. Last year, Pat Garrett, the sheriff in neighboring Washington County, ordered deputies not to assist law enforcement in Portland unless it was directly connected to a case in their county. This followed a costly civil lawsuit and judgement against two Washington County tactical officers who injured a north Portland man while assisting Portland police on a search warrant. Later in the year, neighboring Clackamas County also issued a directive that deputies would no longer respond to calls in Portland.

"I will not place you at unnecessary personal and professional risk," Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts said in an email to deputies at the time.

The PPB officer tells Newsweek the city's strong anti-police sentiment has led to a chilling work environment where officers are unwilling to use force when needed out of fear that they will have their reputations and career destroyed.

"[Police] are concerned with how this plays on TV and how it will look to the public," the PPB officer says. "We have to consider how media will respond, and lawsuits people file against us for using force. A Portland jury is not sympathetic to police."

Four protesters injured at an antifa protest in 2018 are suing the PPB and city for injuries allegedly resulting from officers' "excessive force." One of them, represented by the ACLU of Oregon, is seeking $250,000 in damages.

Allegations of misconduct can halt an officer's career progress for years, even if the officer is ultimately exonerated. Case in point: PPB Lieutenant Jeff Niiya, the bureau's former crowd control liaison. For most of 2019, he was placed under an outside agency's investigation and review after local media alleged that text exchanges between him and right-wing protesters showed a "chummy" relationship. The headlines sent shockwaves throughout the city, and city commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty accused Portland police of "collusion with right-wing extremists" to the national press. Niiya was removed from his role as crowd control liaison and assigned to desk duty in another division within the department. Investigators ultimately ruled all allegations of unprofessionalism and misconduct unfounded.

Michael Strickland, a 39-year-old conservative videographer—he was convicted in 2017 for brandishing a legal handgun in downtown Portland at left-wing protesters who were pursuing him—says passive policing will lead to more violence.

"Eventually the PPB's 'run-and-hide' policy will get someone killed," Strickland says. "At some point antifa is going to pick the wrong fight, and the person they are attacking will not demonstrate the level of discipline and restraint that I showed." Strickland was found guilty by a judge on 10 counts of unlawful use of a weapon, 10 counts of menacing and one count of second-degree disorderly conduct. His conviction is currently being considered by the Oregon Court of Appeals.

This month, former PPB police chief Outlaw began her role as the police commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department. Jami Resch, the former assistant chief of the investigations branch, was sworn in as the new police chief of the PPB. Judging by the police actions at the Portland protest on Feb. 8, the status quo of passive policing will hold.

Says the PPB officer, "Politics in the city is what leads to action or inaction."
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Wednesday, February 19, 2020

'The news industry is in trouble': Canadian media outlets


In a plea for long-demanded tax and regulatory changes, a large group of news companies is expressing grave concern about the future of the “vibrant media ecosystem in Canada” and the “health of news and of democracy.”

A letter urging Parliament to act and addressed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was signed by an eclectic group of media outlets, including Postmedia, which owns the National Post, Torstar, which publishes the Toronto Star, SaltWire Network, and the CBC among others.

“The news industry in Canada is in trouble,” the letter says. “A strong democracy depends on diverse sources of trusted news.”

Among the changes requested by the group are modifications to Canadian tax rules for digital companies, changes to copyright protection and beefed up competition regulation.

The Section 19 tax rule that allows companies to deduct advertising expenses for ads purchased from global online giants like Facebook and Google has vexed media organizations for years and has even attracted scrutiny from Parliament.

Two years ago, a Senate committee studied the issue and recommended the government revisit the rule, which the committee said “contributed to the media industry’s decline.”

Those rules were written in 1996 for “an analogue economy,” the letter reads. During the recent election campaign, the victorious Liberal Party said it planned to address the issue and proposed a three-per-cent tax on the incomes of large digital companies operating in Canada.

The letter also decries the fact that Facebook and Google suck up about three-quarters of digital ad revenue in Canada partly by linking to journalism produced by traditional outlets.

“At the same time, these players have contributed to a flood of disinformation and fake news which is undermining civil discourse,” the letter reads.

The news outlets also argue that it’s “essential” that regulators gain access to the algorithms used by companies like Facebook and Google to determine which content gets displayed on the platform, to help guard against anti-competitive behaviour.

The letter also encourages the government to crack down on large global companies that are “scraping and republishing news content without permission or payment,” which likely could be addressed with amendments to the Copyright Act.

A press release accompanying the letter says that news outlets have been exploring ideas for sharing content and resources as a response to the shrinking newsrooms in almost every form of journalism. For example, in Winnipeg, the CBC and Winnipeg Free Press have been sharing resources on the weekends and sharing stories across their platforms.

The Liberal government earmarked $600 million in last year’s budget to be spent over five years on tax credits and incentives for news outlets that have seen their business models disrupted by the changing digital landscape. The controversial decision was a flashpoint during the recent election and Conservative leadership candidate Erin O’Toole has pledged to cancel the funding if he becomes prime minister.

The program makes some media outlets eligible for refundable tax credits, provides a non-refundable tax credit for subscriptions to Canadian digital news and gives access to charitable tax incentives for not-for-profit journalism.
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Thursday, February 6, 2020

440 Scientific Papers Last Year Disputed Climate Change Alarm...


WND.com reported on February 3, 2020:
Last year, more than 440 scientific papers were published that cast doubt on the claim that human-caused carbon emissions are causing catastrophic changes to the climate.
The papers show that climate science is not "settled," the NoTricksZone blog reported.
The website noted that while the papers challenge the claims of climate alarmists, they don't prove that the claims are invalid.
The papers support four main skeptical positions that question the climate alarm popularized in academia and media:
  • Natural mechanisms play a significant role in the net changes in the climate system, including temperature variations, precipitation patterns and weather events. The influence of increased carbon concentrations on climatic changes are less pronounced than currently imagined, the papers show.
  • The intensity of warming, hurricanes, droughts sea-level rise, glacier and sea-ice retreat during the modern era is neither unprecedented or remarkable, falling within the range of natural variability.
  • The computer climate models are neither reliable nor consistently accurate. The uncertainty and error ranges are irreducible, and projections of future climate states are not supported by observations, making them little more than speculation.
  • Policies to reduce emissions such as advocacy for renewables are often ineffective and even harmful to the environment. On the other hand, elevated carbon and a warmer climate provide unheralded benefits to the biosphere, including enhanced crop yields.
Conversely, the papers do not support the following "consensus" positions of climate alarmists:
  • Some 110% of the warming since 1950 has been caused by increases in human-caused carbon emissions, leaving natural attribution at close to 0%.
  • Modern warming, glacier and sea-ice recession, sea level rise, drought and hurricane intensities are all occurring at unprecedentedly high and rapid rates, and thus endanger the global biosphere and human civilization.
  • The climate models are reliable and accurate, and the scientific understanding of the effects of both natural factors carbon concentration changes on climate is "settled enough" that "the time for debate has ended."
  • Wind and solar expansion are safe, effective and environmentally friendly alternatives.
Summaries and links to the papers have been posted on the following pages by NoTricksZone:
Page 1
Page 2
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Sunday, February 2, 2020

Canadian Broadcasting report constitutes a stunning overreach

Peter Menzies is a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a former vice-chair of telecommunications for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission

The concept of a free, unfettered internet through which Canadians can speak, learn and communicate without permission of the state was blown apart this week by a series of invasive and unjustifiable recommendations.

The Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel’s report tabled Wednesday didn’t just call, as many feared, for the extension of broadcasting-content regulation to the internet. It advocated for a sweeping series of interventions that would make all online media – from online sites such as Rabble to Rebel News and in any language – subject to government regulation.

For more than 25 years, an unfettered, profoundly democratic internet has thrived in Canada. Online entertainment providers have created unprecedented levels of prosperity within a creative sector that has grown from a $5-billion industry to almost $9-billion in the past decade. Print media have struggled to transition to online distribution but, while many have added video, they haven’t remotely challenged the traditional definition of broadcasting. Meanwhile, many new and innovative platforms have launched; YouTube has produced unsubsidized stars such as Lilly Singh and Justin Bieber and created, according to a Ryerson University study, 24,000 jobs. All of this without the protection of the regulated “system.”

And yet the panel, formed by the government to advise on modernization of the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Acts, decided – in a breathtaking expansion of scope and bureaucratic hubris – not only to ignore that prosperity, but to rein it in. And it wants this done by redefining broadcasting to “extend beyond audio and audiovisual content to include alphanumeric news content made available to the public by means of telecommunications, collectively known as media content.” And “media content means audio or audiovisual content or alphanumeric news content.”

In other words, if you transmit, for commercial purposes, words, video or voice through the internet, text messages, fax or phone line, you will do so only with permission of a federal agency.

That’s right: After more than a century of non-interference in speech through telecommunications, it is suggested that the state will determine what constitutes news and, when the proposed objectives of the act are included, “trusted” news.

That indicates that the content of virtually every online information entity – magazines, newspapers, subscription newsletters, real estate listings, travel advisories, weather reports, relationship advice, think-tank analyses, craft beer reviews and the latest Ukrainian borscht recipe – may be subject to the stern eye of what assumedly will be thousands of Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commision (CRTC) bureaucrats. (A name change to the Canadian Communications Commission is suggested to reflect its new, omnipotent role.)

But the panel didn’t stop there. It went on to ask that new legislation apply to commercial media originating from outside the country “whether or not they have a place of business in Canada.” Assumedly that means not just Netflix, but The New York Times, The Daily Telegraph, video games and who knows how many sites of an adult “audiovisual” nature may be expected at some point to offer required levels of Canadian content.

Not all will have to be licensed. The panel suggests the CRTC may exempt certain entities from that obligation. But all will be required to register and “contribute in an appropriate manner to the creation, production and discoverability of Canadian media content.” “Alphanumeric” news sites will not be subject to spending requirements and, while they may qualify for subsidy/tax credits, their “economic relationships” with content providers will be regulated.

Fairness demands noting that the panel made a number of sensible recommendations for which it should be commended. The suggestion that the CBC be weaned off accepting advertising is particularly welcome as is the consolidation of organizations supporting the two-thirds English, one-third French creative funding pools.

Yet, there are no recommendations among the 97 listed regarding safeguarding the independence of the regulator of news from political interference or of improving transparency regarding its decisions. Consumer issues are generally dealt with through talk of reviews, studies and consultations. Over all, the panel very clearly saw the internet primarily as the new servant of the Canadian-content industry and its roughly 3 per cent of gross domestic product. In doing so, it produced a series of recommendations that displayed a profoundly #okboomer view of modern communications.

All this when there was little evidence of a problem that could not have been solved through targeted, direct government funding. But the panel opted instead for making the internet and all of its subscribers pay – with their wallets and their freedom – to support the selfish demands of a small, unsettled segment within an otherwise flourishing and entrepreneurial creative industry.

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Licensing for media companies in Canada

OTTAWA -- The minister charged with modernizing Canada’s broadcast and telecommunications law says if the government is to adopt recommendations laid out by an expert panel, licensing enforcement likely won’t be applied the same way for small media groups as it will be for global tech giants.

One of the report’s proposals, drafted by former telecommunications executive Janet Yale, specifically suggests requiring all companies that deliver "audio, audiovisual, and alphanumeric news content" to Canadians be regulated by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) or another body, through a licence or registration.

"If you’re a distributor of content in Canada and obviously if you’re a very small media organization the requirement probably wouldn’t be the same if you’re Facebook, or Google. There would have to be some proportionality embedded into this," said Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault in an interview on CTV’s Question Period airing Sunday.

He said the government will take time to carefully consider the 97 guidelines set out by the expert panel, most of which suggest handing over more powers to the CRTC.

Among those recommendations is a requirement for streaming companies to contribute to the production of Canadian content by applying a levy or requiring they allocate a portion of revenue to the cause. The tax model has been popularly coined as the "Netflix Tax," but Guilbeault says the two concepts are different.

"It’s about fairness. Companies are paying GST (General Sales Tax) in Canada and there’s no reason that some of the wealthiest companies in the world who are operating on Canadian soil shouldn’t pay," said Guilbeault.

"They’re investing a lot of money in Canada right now. We’re asking them to dedicate part of that money to specific Canadian cultural content. We’re not asking them to do more."

Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, told CTVNews.ca the report is "candidly extreme" and has no "physical boundaries."

He said the goal of generating more Canadian content remains unclear, given the record success the Canadian film and television sector has seen in recent years.

"The industry is enjoying massive success, so the question then shifts a bit to OK; we want to ensure there are Canadian stories. Part of the problem with that argument is the last two years have also been record years for Canadian certified content," said Geist.

Beyond that, he said the panel does not address what it means to be Canadian.

"We have a system for it, but the system, I think many would acknowledge, is really bad at it," said Geist. "Netflix can never under the current definition create Canadian content, because we require the producer to be Canadian"

Instead of rejigging the current model, Geist says the panel has instead pitched a "massive and costly" overhaul of the system.

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner, who holds the title of shadow minister for industry and economic development, shares this perspective and voiced her concerns in a statement following the release of the report.

In a subsequent interview with CTVNews.ca, Rempel Garner said, "The report seeks to add further layers of bureaucracy, on a system that needs to be disrupted writ-large."

She added that the recommendations don’t go far enough in protecting Canadians against the misuse of personal data by companies like Facebook or Twitter or how to navigate Canada’s emerging 5G network.

Another of the panel’s submissions she contends with is the notion that the CRTC would identify news sites that are "accurate, trusted, and reliable" to enhance the "diversity of voices."

"It’s very paternalizing and also very frightening to think that the government would try to impose or say that’s the role of the government to control. That puts us in league with countries that control the media," said Rempel Garner.

Both Rempel Garner and Geist question whether a bill reflecting the panel’s proposals would hold up against a constitutional challenge.

"It’s not the sort of thing we’d expect to see in Canada, to be honest," Geist said.

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