Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Blog post lands G20 activist in court

G20 activist Julian Ichim was ready for his day in court Tuesday, but the same couldn’t be said for the Crown.

Ichim appeared Tuesday at Old City Hall after he refused an OPP request last month to remove a blog post that contained the pseudonym of an undercover officer who had befriended him for more than a year before the Toronto summit in 2010.

But the Crown attorney familiar with the case wasn’t in attendance and the disclosure, which outlines the Crown’s case, wasn’t available until 4 p.m. The case was put over until January.

The Kitchener native, a self-described Marxist-Leninist and anarchist, was rounded up on the Saturday morning of G20 last year as one of the so-called conspirators. The charges were later dropped.

Ichim was in trouble again with the police this November, only three days after he “decided to take a stand,” and started a blog that published the name Khalid Mohammed, the pseudonym adopted by OPP investigator Const. Bindo Showan.

Ichim, 32, alleges that for a year and a half, the undercover officer “pretended to be my best friend,” even driving him to the hospital to visit his mother who was receiving leukemia treatments. She has since passed away.

But Ichim’s attempts to turn the tables on the officer by publishing his undercover name last month on a blog landed him in hot water with the OPP, who said he was violating a publication ban that was in place for the G20 trials.

That ban was lifted less than a week after Ichim’s blog posts, when a plea bargain was struck with the 17 alleged co-conspirators accused of plotting the G20 destruction.

Alex Hundert and Amanda Hiscocks, who both pleaded guilty under the deal, were at Old City Hall on Tuesday in support of Ichim. They will be sentenced Jan. 13.

Ichim will be back in court Jan. 11. The activist says he will start a hunger strike if he is convicted and put in jail.

Origin
Source: Star 

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