A lot of talk on Twitter this morning about the teenage reveler at the Mardi Gras who appears in video footage being slammed on his back while handcuffed and then appears stood-on by the officer who slammed him. In the footage a second officer instructs the person videoing proceedings to stop without authority.
Police have said this morning that he has been charged with assault police, resisting arrest, and offensive language. Some folks in response have uttered a low whistle, remarking that “he has been charged with a serious offence”. Between that police comment, and the reaction to it from everyone else, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there’s now two sides to the story and we can all stop being so judgy about NSW police who have a “hard job to do”.
Nonsense.
The person has been charged with what some lawyers and others describe as “the trinity”. The trinity refers to those specific three offences, and they are called the trinity when they police charge someone with them because they have nothing else to charge with.
Why those charges? Quite simple; they are the three things police can charge people that creates the impression that the accused has done something wrong (otherwise why would they be charged right?) but also they are the three charges there is no public backlash for if they fail in court.
Why no backlash? They are simply the three charges that nobody cares if they fail.
- If a court dismisses a charge of assault police, it’s still believable that the accused was doing something wrong, but it’s just when they were apprehended by police they didn’t also behave in a manner which constitutes assaulting police
- Similarly if a court dismisses a charge of resisting arrest, the public are invited to believe that while the suspect was guilty of an offence he was being arrested for, his behaviour during that arrest was just not itself enough to also constitute an offence
- The offence of offensive language is slightly different. The first two charges are about believing that someone has done something wrong but just didn’t also didn’t make it worse when the police tried to apprehend them. The offensive language charge is more an overarching issue about being able to give a shit either way. It’s something the police can charge for (and now say the accused is facing three charges relating to events during the mardi gras parade) and if it’s dismissed (it almost always is) there will never be a public outcry that police appear to have fabricated a charge of swearing. Because nobody could care whether the accused swore or not.
One offence nobody cares about that shouldn’t even be an offence, and two which don’t actually address what an accused is supposed to have done, but rather what they did when police sought to apprehend them for it.
The trinity is not “serious offences”, it’s effectively a character assassination designed to give somebody a charge record in the absence of having genuine recourse against behaviour which is genuinely societally unacceptable. It’s an abuse of process so that homophobic (or more commonly racist) police can assert authority without accountability.
Check out this tumblr of people complaining about Qantas slightly altering their in-flight menu to be appropriate for the region they’re flying to due to their deal recent with Emirates. The rage is almost certainly inspired by a ‘just asking questions’ blog post from popular wingnut blogger Andrew Bolt.
Do you remember when Australia’s federal education minister was Brendan Nelson? When Australia’s minister for education was in the media telling Islamic schools to teach Australian values or “clear off?” When, to promote the teaching of said Australian values in schools, Dr Nelson required “that all schools have a functioning flagpole, fly the Australian flag and display the poster Values for Australian Schooling” in order to receive federal education funding. That all schools display a poster about values featuring the image of Simpson and his donkey. When Minister Nelson justified his threat to Islamic schools on the basis that “if we lose sight of what Simpson and his donkey represents, then we will lose our direction as a country.” Remember all this? I know I do.
Well this is Australia. Today.
So what are we to do when, after a century of veneration, the legend of Simpson and his donkey is officially punctured and new evidence emerges that the story is largely a myth inflated and exaggerated by the sloppy work of journalists, amateur historians and jingoistic politicians.A year-long inquiry by a government tribunal last week flatly rejected the long-running populist campaign to have Simpson awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross - the highest award for gallantry in the Commonwealth. But, more significantly, the tribunal found that Simpson’s deeds were no more exceptional than those of hundreds of other stretcher bearers working at Gallipoli at the time. The inquiry’s report said there were many accounts describing Simpson’s conduct. ”The tribunal was, however, unable to find any witness accounts of a specific act of valour … which could single out Simpson’s bravery from other stretcher-bearers in the Field Ambulance.”
In the process of what has been the most forensic review of Simpson’s war service, the tribunal heard startling evidence that much of the legend of the man with the donkey has been built on false or faulty evidence, richly embellished over the years as history has been turned into hagiography.
Source: Taken for a ride?
Original pdf (50kb) of the Values for Australian Schooling poster can be found here.
The Trinity
![“Ted Baillieu was [the] second-longest serving Premier in the country at 2 years 4 months” - Ben Raue
For those that don’t know, this man is Eddie Obeid, a man who was essentially the top power broker, a.k.a. “factional warlord,” in the NSW Labor party when we burnt through three premiers in one term and who’s family’s business dealings have been the subject of an explosive ICAC inquiry. Prominent members of the NSW Labor right faction were also behind the push to dump Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister in 2010. The tendency for political leaders to be rolled or swapped mid-term is now being called NSW disease.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/efc9631390317cbc528b34367646d9f8/tumblr_mj8k6xtuqM1qbjzg5o1_400.png)
“Ted Baillieu was [the] second-longest serving Premier in the country at 2 years 4 months” - Ben Raue
For those that don’t know, this man is Eddie Obeid, a man who was essentially the top power broker, a.k.a. “factional warlord,” in the NSW Labor party when we burnt through three premiers in one term and who’s family’s business dealings have been the subject of an explosive ICAC inquiry. Prominent members of the NSW Labor right faction were also behind the push to dump Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister in 2010. The tendency for political leaders to be rolled or swapped mid-term is now being called NSW disease.
**please do not remove artist’s comments or repost this comic!!!**
okay so i finally finished this comic for my design class! i might eventually print it in small booklets or make multiple episodes/issues if enough interest is expressed. if you reblog this and you would be interested in purchasing/reading issues of this or comics like this, please say so so that i can gauge whether or not this is something i should pursue! <3
the final image is what the back cover will look like if i print it!
EDIT: the phrase “sorry my friendship is a crappy consolation prize” is adapted from a post by tumblr user pampampam!
EDIT 2: i added the page in between 1 and 2 to make the friendzoner’s reaction make more sense and to better communicate the point i was trying to make with this comic!
OKAY HERE IT IS WITH THE NEW PAGE
i’m gonna make a new photoset with the full version too
i also wanna make friendzoner endpages for when i get it printed
i know this isn’t exactly “kawaii” but hey the protag has pink hair
The “I’m sorry my friendship is a crappy consolation prize” panel really speaks to me right now.
This is all excellent
Many of our political institutions regularly confront problems that are not the result of knowledge deficiencies. Johnson’s fixation on the city, however, makes him erroneously conclude that most problems do stem from knowledge gaps that can be easily, quickly, and cheaply filled with better data. He never mentions that some problems (even at the city level) can only be mitigated—never solved—through bargaining, because those problems emerge from competing interests, not knowledge gaps. Johnson’s is a post-ideological world, where history has ended and politics has been reduced to fixing potholes and reviewing patent applications. Think Palo Alto, not East Palo Alto. In this world, the only evil to be reckoned with comes from lazy bureaucrats who refuse to publish data in easily accessible computer formats.
Glorious
Via http://twitter.com/angrygoat/status/296455068163649537/photo/1
In the eyes of News Ltd, Julia Gillard is a woman first and our Prime Minister second.
I would love to see a small media organisation (New Matilda?) ask Tony Abbott at every one of his press conferences about his fashion choices.
Clickbait gonna bait
