Student shot with Taser by UCPD officers after failing to show ID at a random check in a UCLA computer lab.

Laila Gordy, a fourth-year economics student who was present in the library during the incident, said police officers threatened to shoot her with a Taser when she asked an officer for his name and his badge number.

It’s hard to believe, while watching what was going on, that not a single person attempted to attack the officers to stop the abuse. It reminds me of the Houston Wal-Mart case where bystanders watched as Wal-Mart employees killed a man by pressing his chest to the hot parking lot asphalt until he suffered a heart attack. How egregious does the assault have to be before we challenge an authority? How much do we have to be pushed before we push back?

More: an eyewitness account.

“This series is about how those in power have used Freud’s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.” Adam Curtis’s The Century Of The Self is a four-part BBC documentary about the effect one belief has had on business and politics of the 20th century: that human beings are inherently irrational beings driven by sexual and aggressive drives that must be controlled by society or else be destroyed by them.

All four hours are available for download from archive.org, as well as on Google Video:

I stumbled onto this today. It’s good to know people still care about Canadian music, especially when this year is shaping up to be the least Canadian for me yet (with only the Dears and, if you stretch the definition, Rose Melberg as homegrown favorites). And thanks to the nifty MP3 links, I can catch up with the bands I know nothing about—in my case, about 80% of the list. But there’s one shameful inclusion on the list. No, not Nelly Furtado (though really, are we that hard up for good Canadiana that Nelly Furtado’s Timbaland excursion still counts?). I’m talking about the Arcade Fire. Two choice quotes:

I don’t think this band released anything in 2006. But among my most joyous musical moments of the entire year was in the pub at All Tomorrows Parties in Camber Sands, England, some 3:30 in the morning, when amid all our sweat-and-starry dancing the DJ threw on “Rebellion” and I felt all my memories shake, just shake, splendid through my body. (Sean, Said The Gramophone)

What did they do in 2006? Ok, so nothing too publicly apparent right now. But they’re almost finished recording the follow-up to Funeral. So by the time that comes out around April, it should be apparent how big they were in 2006. And activity or no, I still think they’re the best band in Canada, so they had to be included here. (The Mass Is Secretly Obsessed…)

Well fuck. Why don’t we just put the Guess Who on the list? People really like the Guess Who, and so what if they didn’t release an album or really do much of anything in 2006? Did the Arcade Fire even play a show this year? Sean’s talking about “Rebellion” coming up in a DJ set, fer chrissakes! The first comment on the page says Broken Social Scene got the easiest ride to a high rank, but at least they played a bunch of concerts. Newsflash: you can’t be a hot Canadian band if you did fuck all in the spotlight. Save the praise and the kudos for next year’s list.

And yes, this means the Dears probably shouldn’t have gotten their spot on last year’s list either.