It's actually worth watching just the first few seconds of that atrocity to see how deviously well "Pastor Art" has been coached by Ezra Levant to play to the cameras. Go ahead ... the first 30 seconds is all you need to see Pastor Art in the process of being arrested, at which time he -- unbidden -- drops to his knees, then proceeds to lie face down in the snow, despite the arresting officers making it clear that is not what they were asking for. As always, with Pastor Art, it's all show for the cameras, which makes me wonder why The Man has not yet figured out how to deal with this, because the solution to Pawlowski's threatics is thigh-suckingly obvious:
Leave him there.
Every time Pastor Art insists on not following instructions and dropping to his knees or, in this case, lying down face first in the snow, the proper response is to have the officers simply take a couple steps back and wait for him to think better of it and get up. Because, left long enough, he will get up.
Recall earlier this year when Pastor Art dropped to his knees on the airport tarmac -- again for the cameras -- and the police lifted him to his feet. No. Don't do that. Just step back and tell him to stand up. And if he doesn't, just wait. For as long as it takes. Because it won't take long before kneeling on very hard airport tarmac gets really, really uncomfortable, but until Pastor Art comes to his senses, just let him kneel there.
In this latest incident, if professional grifter and Rebel-subsidized victim Artur Pawlowski insists on lying face down in the snow, again, just back up a step or two and order him to stand up; if he doesn't, just leave him there, since I suspect a few minutes lying face down in the snow in early January in Alberta is going to get uncomfortable fast but, hey, don't rush the issue -- let Pastor Art lie there in the sub-zero cold and melting snow until he recognizes the error of his ways.
Really, how hard is this?
You're welcome.
P.S. I am perpetually amused by Rebel News' persistent description of Pastor Art's lawyer, JSS Barristers' Sarah Miller, as "top notch" when she appears to be, in fact, utterly incompetent and a total buffoon to the point where she seems to be forever unaware of where her client is, what he is doing, and whether there is a warrant out for his arrest.
Perhaps if Miller was not so hideously awful at her job, her client would not be getting arrested on a regular basis.
I'm just saying.
9 comments:
Miller has student loans from law school and a mortgage in an upscale Calgary neighborhood. Ezra and Artur are cash cows she is happy to milk.
If I was a judge and Pastor Art kept showing up in my courtroom, I would have some serious words with Miller about why she can't keep a grip on her client.
No lawyer has sufficient clout with a client to corral Pawlowski.
Giving him "keep quiet" guidance is basically about as useful as advising Mr. Ross to retain counsel for any of his myriad legal actions.
An amusing mental image for sure - Pawloski face down in slush waiting to be picked up by cops, who simply stand back and watch him go hypothermic. However, as we both know, it won't work.
Pawlowski's little skits, like Menzies' serial "confrontations", are staged for Rebel cameras and targeted to the Rebel and associated audiences. What actually happens onsite is nearly irrelevant; the arrests simply provide raw material for the Rebel editors to confect a version according to their formula. A furious/somber Ezra/Sheila/Avi intros the piece with a carefully framed narrative to set up the innocence of the "victim" and the unreasonable behaviour of the police; a carefully edited version of the arrest that omits the provocation and all reasonable requests for compliance by police; lots of extreme closeup, hand held footage and mic noise to enhance the sense of violence; and the breathless post-script from the "brutalized victim".
It's as highly stylized, and artificial as a Noh play, and requires the same suspension of disbelief. The Rebel has been so successful at conditioning their audiences that they can now actually SHOW viewers Menzies antagonizing cops, breaking through a police line and charging the Prime Minister, and STILL convince viewers they're seeing unprovoked police aggression. Winston is seeing as many fingers as he's being told to see.
So police non intervention won't work for three reasons.
- It won't matter. The Rebel will simply edit out any video/audio that doesn't contribute to their narrative, and their audience won't notice or care.
- Worse, if Pawlowski's petulant videogenic non-compliance can't be ignored, it will be simply be incorporated into the narrative. Instead of brutal cops dragging the "pastor" to his feet, the story will be "the pastor was left lying, freezing in the slush for minutes before he defied police instructions and stood". Remember Pawloski leaving his car, striding several yards away into highway traffic, and kneeling down? Remember the "shock and horror" the Rebel milked that one for? Any sane viewer knows this is simply performance; but the Rebel isn't seeking to convince, only to feed their viewer's need for outrage and their cash flow.
- And the third reason it won't work: because cops are professionals, and will not leave a man lying in the slush or kneeling in traffic. They're busy and they have jobs to do.
I think the same principle applies to their lawyer. Miller's failure to keep Pawlowski out of court isn't a bug, it's a feature. His only value to the Rebel, like Menzies, is the confrontations he can inspire, the arrests he can provoke, and the video those arrests can yield. Her job isn't to keep him out of troublel it's to help him break the law just enough to keep the money flowing in, but not enough to yank him out of circulation. So she's actually quite effective.
Anon: I don't think the situation is as futile as you think. First, even the Rebel's own footage can't be sufficiently doctored to hide what is actually happening. In the clip above, it's painfully obvious that the officers are not asking Pastor Art to kneel or lie face down, and you can see the obvious frustration on their faces when he refuses to follow their instructions.
More to the point, if the cops *understand* that they're about to be played, they can prepare for it. Regarding the above clip, in order to nullify an accusation of, "They left him face down in the snow for several minutes," all the cops need to do is, every several seconds, say clearly, "Please stand up, sir." That's it. What is Der Rebel going to do? Edit out dozens of short clips from the final result?
My point is that, if the authorities appreciate that they're about to be played by Ezra and Pastor Art, with very little preparation and a little planning, they can beat the game. They just need to have a plan, and stick to it.
The Calgary Herald has a good account of things.
https://calgaryherald.com/news/crime/pawlowski-brothers-arrested-after-alleged-protest-outside-alberta-health-ministers-home
"While police struggle to apprehend Artur, he falls to his knees then lies on his stomach in the snow, to which an exasperated officer says, “He did that himself.”"
Cops are, in fact, trained for the Pawlowskis of the world, and have been since the primary focus of public protest shifted in the 1960s from actually disabling an enterprise (as in strikes and boycotts) to media messaging, a shift that occurred during the Civil Rights and antiwar campaigns of the sixties.
Pawlowksi's techniques are fairly basic, and are known to and practiced by activists of every stripe (including the labour movement, where I was first shown how to writhe furiously in the grip of a cop while not actually doing any damage). Pawloski, of course, has the advantage that his antics don't have to survive critical media coverage; it's just raw material for the Rebel and other propagandists to edit and sharpen with "shocked and appalled" commentary.
The cop's responsibility when confronted with a Pawlowski is first to eliminate any physical danger to the protester or others in the environment, then to detain and removed the offender against public order. Mitigating the propaganda value of the protester isn't the highest priority; their training, appropriately, emphasizes making the protesters and the people around them safe.
Pawlowski knows and plays that perfectly. During his highest profile arrest, he walked away from his car and cameraman and away from the police cars planted himself as close to highway traffic as he possibly could, and forced the cops to drag him the maximum possible distance to their car, with cars whizzing by in the background.
Cops won't and can't leave a protester lying face down in the snow, or kneeling on a highway, to defuse their message. They restore order, as quickly and safely as they can.
You can be sure that if the cops audibly admonished Pawlowski to stand up, one of two things would happen. He would either remain in protest position until ultimately dragged away, secure in the knowledge that the Rebel would simply edit out all the admonitions; and in future performances, he's simply put himself in greater and greater perceived jeopardy to force police action. (You've seen that happen already with Dave Menzies, who over the last couple of years has been force to up his provocation from simply yelling to actually shoving cops in order to get the reaction he needs for the camera.
Don't get me wrong - I'd be delighted to see Pawlowki drown himself in a mud puddle to spite the cops and provide a good Rebel segment. But I'd rather see limited police training budgets spent on emergency conflict resolution, defusing domestic disputes or critical event management that on a "how to make Artur Pawllowski look like an even bigger fraud" workshops.
OK, your points are well taken, even if I still like the idea of leaving Pastor Art lying face down in a freezing puddle of meltwater.
Believe me, I love the idea too!
Post a Comment