Readers of this site know that I usually support the police. However, from what I’ve seen, the unacceptable attack on peaceful protesters and dozens upon dozens of innocent civilians who had nothing to do with the protest should lead to the firing of Chief Blair and condemnation against anyone who defends this abuse of power.
The only way I’ll mitigate my comments is if anyone can provide clear evidence to support Blair’s claim that everyone was given three warnings to leave before the debacle began. None of the videos I’ve seen and none of the reports by reliable sources I’ve heard support his claim. Yet, when the media say there are conflicting reports about this warning, the only evidence they give is Blair’s own claims. If anyone can provide clear evidence one way or another, it will be posted here of course.
In short, this was one ginormous clusterfuck. Thank you Harper. Thank you McGuinty. Thank you Miller. Thank you Blair. And thank you criminal wannabe anarchists.
Officers form a line at Queen and Cameron Sts. on June 27, 2010 as a large group of protesters and pedestrians are penned in by police nearby. (CARLOS OSORIO/TORONTO STAR)
Thank you for this. This is now one of my favourite websites on the web, and my prof was right about this being a bastion of rational thought. That being said, I may be a novice in the matter, but I’d like to think I have a bit of a talent or knack for spotting when someone is lying. All I was picking up yesterday from that news conference after the illegal detainment of hundreds of innocents, when the police scapegoat went out to try and explain just how bad they fucked up and why they wouldn’t apologize, everything about him was showing off just how much he really didn’t believe a word he was saying.
What I personally can’t believe, is how much Torontonians seem to be buying into this bullshit garbage about a large number of the people there who were illegally detained and dehumanized being “protesters.” For Christ’s sake, there were media members caught up in this thing, and they all seemed to be on the verge of really saying what they felt throughout the ordeal but I’m assuming they were being restrained by their superiors.
One clear point of evidence that shows that there WAS NO warning, is that the media members who were detained and who were eventually released through calls from their bosses and showing their media tags, said themselves that there was zero warning, they were just pinned in against their will and detained right there in the middle of the street. Also, a man by the name of Sammy Katz, I believe he works for York University, was on the line for at least a few hours during the ordeal and he was updating the entire situation from the ground – he too said that there was no warning, no explanation, not even a slight hint of a reason. That’s as close to as clear proof as I can personally provide, it was on CP24 June 27th 2010 from 7 pm to 10:30 pm, perhaps a bit later. If you can find it, that’s all the proof you would need to see that there was never a warning at all.
Again however, thank you for posting the truth – in the end, that’s all that really matters. I hope to see Blair’s resignation in the papers soon, followed by a public apology from Harper. But who am I kidding? I’m just a student in Toronto, I know how this shit works. Maybe one day i’ll be able to do something to change this, and I hope so. This country deserves the truth, no matter how horrible and bad it is. We’ve earned that much.
I got pissed off that they (the media) even called the black bloc “protesters”. They’re anarchist morons who have nothing to do with legitimate protest.
Blair should resign and Harper should be beaten, tarred, feathered, and run into the states where his miserable ilk belongs. He’s turned our country into his personal playground and piggy-bank, and only seems to have support amongst the exceedingly stupid or greedy.
“and only seems to have support amongst the exceedingly stupid or greedy….”
In short, the vast majority of people who hold power in this little nation we call home. What pisses me off is the vast amount of lies that people who are in this city are being fed by the government.
Hello!
I watched some of the G20 protests on Youtube. I wanted to point somethings out and see what other people’s opinions were.
A lot of the people in the mob were trying to shoot amateur video of the protests. These people should have known that the police would be making drastic actions to contain the situation, reasonable or not. To avoid any mistreatment they should have stayed home and watched it on the news like everyone else. The police’s response to the G20 were pretty similar to that of fights at clubs so it’s no surprise how they reacted.
Some of the video I watched, the people weren’t even protesting anything. They were just “excersing their rights” to gather and sing the nationl anthum on the streets. My question is why would you pick the G20 weekend to do this? They were just poking at the beast to see how pissed off they could make it.
I hope that we all knew that something bad was going to happen this past weekend. Riots happen all the time. Heck I wouldn’t be surprised in theire was a protest because Chris Bosh leaves Toronto.
The worst part is that the average officer (usually perceived by the current government as “accountability shields”) was placed in the midst of a situation that was tailor-made to be extremely tense. A little bit of quick math suggested that the average Canadian taxpayer shelled out $50/head for this international circle-jerk – which is bad enough, but Harper seemed determined to turn the thing into an active challenge for violence. Naturally, some people accepted. He put police into a deliberately tense situation and happily allowed them to accept the brunt of public condemnation. The police did screw up (considerably), but in a sense they’re bigger victims than anybody; they’ve been reduced to a personal goon squad by a sociopathic monster in order to take blame away from where it really belongs.
To UTSC Student and Ian,
I agree with what you two are saying and I really hope some people are held accountable. We’ll see if the public remembers this next election, both provincial and federal. However, the opposition offer nothing against Harper, and McGuinty is safe because Harris before him was the worst Premier ever (until McGuinty). So I don’t know what’s going to happen, but if you listen to people on the streets/radio, you can see that the average person is not very smart and can’t get beyond “the cops showed admirable restraint.” As I said in my comment to my previous thread, WHO ARE THE BIGGEST THUGS?, the cops were told to stand down, even when they could have nailed those criminal pricks and prickettes. And then Blair or the head of the ISU had to compensate for his idiocy by having the cops do the WRONG thing by harassing people leaving fucking restaurants! Even a TTC driver on his way to work was detained. And as you mentioned, the media were detained, despite showing their G20 Press badges!
To Tyler Durden (a name after my own heart…), I agree that many people may have been there just to be there, but I would never want to suggest that people should not have the right to protest. Sure, there are poseurs and people who are ill-informed, but those who truly stand for something should be able to protest if it doesn’t mess everyone up. So why were PEACEFUL protesters forcibly pushed away from the DESIGNATED PROTEST area on Saturday? As for singing the national anthem, some of them were likely being symbolic/ironic in their song, while others were just following along because they’re sheeple. But the most important thing is, if police are going to take action–which they should have done against the CRIMINALS on Saturday–they should have given warnings first, especially with their multi-million dollar SOUND CANNON. As I’ve said repeatedly, Blair appears to have lied about those warnings.
Tyler Durden:
If I want to sing the goddamned anthem in Canada, one should think that I should be able to sing the fucking anthem whereever the fuck I should please, considering that I’m IN Canada. What kind of fucking nonsense bullshit excuse is that? They picked the wrong fucking weekend to sing the anthem? Is that the best you can come up with? How does THAT translate to the police being RIGHT?
So let me get this straight…the police were right to arrest random people in downtown Toronto, commit mass humane rights violations, and lockdown a whole city center…because people were singing the Canadian anthem?
I would think that a person who chose a name like Tyler Durden would be a little more pointed and blunt in his arguments, and have ones that a toddler wouldn’t be able to rip through like a bull through wet tampons.
And just because you’re “tempting the beast” by “singing the anthem” doesn’t give the beast the right to whack you in the head with a baton, throw you to the floor, bash you with his shield, laugh at you while he’s arresting you, drag your face across the floor and throw you in a cage for the next 20 hours while referring to it as your kennel, giving you three cups of water and a sandwich for the entire fucking time. You think that it justifies it? Honestly, sometimes I wonder what the fuck this city needs for people to realize just how stupid they’re becoming. This isn’t even sheeple – it gives me GOOSEBUMPS to see that 70 percent of the population of Toronto believed that the police showed restraint and were in the right. Fucking Stupid.
Politics isn’t about who the fuck is covering their own ass best. That’s how shit like this happens and people become effectively nothing more than mind bogglingly stupid zombies.
It’s about how you handle pressure under stress. If you can’t handle pressure under STRESS, then DON’T TAKE THE JOB. If you can’t do it, THEN DON’T ACCEPT THE JOB. If you don’t even THINK that you can do it, DON’T TAKE THE JOB. Politics is, at it’s very root – how the man at the top handles it when the shit hits the fan. And we see again, that the man at the top just stepped out of the ROOM when the shit hit the fan, blamed the shit on everyone but himself, and said that all his people did the “best that they could.”
No, it wasn’t the best they fucking could. It was the best that they WOULD.
A lot of cops behaved badly, and the similarity between black bloc tactics and riot police tactics (bludgeon/capture target, return into the anonymity of the swarm) are pretty unsettling. I will concede that the police could have done a lot worse as there were no fatalities or even crippling injuries. It wasn’t pleasant, but compared to what people suffer in other countries on a regular basis, I can understand why some people say “stop whining”.
But that doesn’t make any of it right. It was wrong that the police failed to stop the black bloc (probably because they usually infiltrate the black bloc and lost track of whose skulls to crush) and followed up by detaining anyone they could get their hands on. It was wrong for politicians to dismiss the 1 000 arbitrarily detained Canadians and to lump in protesters with violent lunatics. It was wrong that Harper shit in our city and fanned the fumes. It’s wrong that most people don’t seem to care. Someone posted here that “if you don’t like Canada, leave” (paraphrasing); if my fellow Canadians continue to elect scumbags like Harper and dismiss the rape of the Canadian spirit, I might as well leave. I’ve got family in Australia and it’s easier to find a teaching job in England, where the idiots at least have cooler accents.
Harper’s been raping my country for four years, and I refuse to believe that we are “asking for it”.
Hi UTSC Student:
The G20 weekend was definitely a hostile time in Toronto. The video where the people were singing the national anthem is the one noted below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Heb9BXjYcII
Maybe they were protesting the change in national anthem to a more gender neutral version, I don’t know. But clearly there were a lot of amateur journalists taking up of space. The riot police did not hit any of the people in the crowd. I did see some riot police push the people to disburse. I guess that is a little violent but nothing major happened.
Here is another video where the people were just taking up space and just having a party during the G20:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fhGneV6rQg
There is nothing wrong with having a party, but do not have it during the G20, in front of riot police and mocking them. These 20 something year old hippies need to think of a better way to spend their time.
I believe that the OBJECTIVE of the $1 billion dollars was NOT spent to serve and protect the people of Toronto or the businesses of Toronto. It was spent to protect the world leaders coming into Toronto. The police EXPECTED mass arrests and business to be damaged. They’re primary goal was to protect the world leaders at all costs. The protection of Torontonians was only a secondary objective.
I do agree that the police did hurt a lot of non-violent people during the G20 weekend but to compare them to the savages is a too much.
I’ve been in Toronto for 4 years and I’ve seen two well organized protests, the Tamil protest against the problems in their country and the proroguing of Steven Harpers government.
Both were organized, massive and disruptive to the general public. From what I saw the police did not baton people in their heads and it was overall civilized (not 100%). Both protests made me aware and asking questions about what was happening. Those are protests!
I’m really appreciating/enjoying watching the discussion among contributors to this site. Not to much for me to add at this point, except for this story that some of you will enjoy. I wish there were more guys like these two men at the G20, and I wish they would have all turned their attention toward the scumabgs using the Black Bloc tactics (and I wish the latter hero would have kicked the head in of the fucker on the bike who told him to let go the Black Bloc-ing animal he had apprehended).
http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandgta/2010/07/02/14592956.html
http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/joe_warmington/2010/07/02/14594416.html
Oh, one other thing: The price tag of security. We must keep in mind that the $1.2Billion price tag, no matter how you try to swing it, was about 10 times higher than the average cost for security at such events. Many things went terribly wrong and heads need to roll…
@ Tyler Durden – I fail to see your point exactly. All you’ve really done here, is attempt to explain why I can’t sing the national anthem. Fuck, if I want to go up to a riot cop and sing “American Pie” in his face, I should be able to do so without having various parts of my body sore and busted up for the next week and a half. Martial law is not Canadian Law – what the police did, regardless of if they did it of their own accord or not, or if they did it according to orders, somebody, somewhere, who should have known the law, purposely decided to engage and order their subordinates to engage in illegal activities that resulted in mass human rights violations.
I’ve been in Toronto for 19 years. I was born here, I was raised here, and I will forever remember where I came from. It is for this reason, that I reserve the right to rip the fucking asshole out from my country’s government when they fuck up.
Yeah, you’re right, at neither protest did anything happen.
But then again, neither protest involved a 1.2 Billion dollar security price tag.
Neither protest turned the city into lockdown.
Neither protest involved over 1000 riot cops.
Neither protest involved a fence built to keep the members of the city, Torontonians, from accessing parts of their own fucking city on the grounds to protect a few heads of state (Which I may or may not agree with…I agree with the fence. But I don’t agree with them doing it in Toronto. I hear GITMO is nice this time of year…)
Neither protest involved the detainment of HUNDREDS (!) upon hundreds of people who were not involved IN ANY PROTEST IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM.
So basically, yeah you’re right. Those were protests. This wasn’t a protest. It was the cops beating the shit out of a bunch of innocent people, throwing them in jail for 20 – 30 hours…etc etc…Do I really need to keep going?
Oh, and to compare them to the savages is a bit MUCH?
The savages broke some windows, threw some urine, stole some shit and painted some graffiti. I’m not even going to REPEAT what i’d charge Blair and the rest of the usual suspects with.
It’d be too fucking long anyway.
I keep hearing that these cops reacted this way because the got some urine thrown at them. I know that some of you might think this following is irrational, but it’s just a musing on my part –
I wonder about those men and women who were victims of that crime spree that was going on a little while back where someone was getting sprayed with fecal matter and then being pickpocketed under the guise of being “helped.” Did they beat the ever loving shit out of the people who were pickpocketing them, or the person who sprayed them?
Or, even worse, I hope to fucking god that these cops don’t always react the same way when being sprayed with fecal matter. They may find having children to be a bit of an issue then, wouldn’t it be? Just a thought. Might be irrational, but fuck if it isn’t a decent musing.
Two words : Accountability and Justification.