13% of all Canada’s police officers and military are in Toronto ‘defending’ 20 world leaders. The 20,000 strong Integrated Security Unit is both armed and armoured, and by their own admission, the Unit is very selective about who they get into conflict with.

My sorrow is for 10,000 peaceful protesters whose voice is going unheard.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/business/global/27security.html?ref=americas

All these G20 leaders are gathering to talk about austerity.

Austerity.

Spending a billion dollars to wall themselves off, shut down a major North American city for days at a time, and do all manner of damage to the reputation of that city by demanding draconian security measures.

Add to that their fat expenses on luxury hotels, the finest food and drink plus an ungodly amount spent traveling to and fro.

Austerity.

In essence, these people will demand their citizens accept less basic civil services (hospitals, libraries, schools, infrastructure) while feting themselves behind of moat of policemen.

Austerity folks, this is what austerity looks like.

Holding one of these huge summits benefits few in the place it is held. Probably the convention center and a few other hotels get paid a large sum, and the local government may get funding for their troubles, but few other businesses see any benefit, and with security being so insane as to (whether for good or for ill) force protesters to be far away from the VIPs, why bother?

Seriously: if the Gn (where n is the number of countries represented) wanted to hold one of these in my city—and we’ve hosted a political convention or two, and host other large events all the time—I’d tell them to go fsck themselves.

Where would they ever find a the kind of psychologically damaged soldiers, with both he combat experience and training, with a proven track record of maintaining unit cohesion while treating people like animals and blindly following poorly defined orders which they would need in order to do such a thing?

yeah, exactly.

Last I heard they were still saying only 2 of those “muzzle blasts” were shot…video shows 3, and there’s already smoke from a 4th. They also yesterday denied using tear gas, and then never apologized to the public when they were proven wrong…

I was in a lot of this, blogging ‘for’ CBC. Had a friend almost arrested for asking directions TO GET OUT of a protest which she didn’t intend to be in.

That regulation that was past expires tomorrow. But…the cops will likely STILL think they have the right to do this (seeing as what they were doing elsewhere, NOT covered by the PWPA, was HIGHLY illegal). IANAL…but I did talk to one!

I don’t know why they want these things, but clearly they do. If they didn’t, they’d have their little parties in cheaper, more easily secured locations, which wouldn’t wreck the local economies for days on end. For example, why on earth was G20 not held at Huntsville, which they just used for G8?

The absence of peace and order on the streets of Canada’s largest city demonstrates that we are suffering through a time of bad government.

Nothing more.
Or less!

Is working with authority ALWAYS the right thing to do? When is it proper to defy authority? What about when authority is corrupt? What about those within the military/police apparatus who are defying authority? Is it always the right thing to do to bow to authority?

Did any cops get killed? Can you point to an article on that? I would feel sorry for the family and expect the perpetrators to be prosecuted. Ditto on any killed protesters.

I think that if you look at the websites for the MANY organizations attending the protest, you’ll find a whole slew of legitimate protests, and some not so… but that is going to depend on your POV about the issues right?

Just because a few kids “trashed” the summit (perhaps with the help of provocateurs in some cases?), doesn’t mean that anywhere near the majority did so. These groups, no matter who they were or what their goals were, were pushed far away from the meeting, where our leaders were meeting, yours and mine, where they could not be heard. The media also focused on this to the exclusion of anything meaningful regarding their goals. Of course, you have not heard what they are protesting, because the media will not report on that, because the media is little more than the public relations arm of the government at this point… And besides, “if it bleeds, it leads” right?

Here’s finished video of a videographer being … well … assaulted numerous times by the police…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7OA920pbv8

Besides, there was probably a Starbucks right across the street without a broken window!

One must bow to such mastery of moral philosophy.

The same old sad song: The people most in need of being beaten, are invariably the strongest and largest people of all!

http://www.blogto.com/city/2010/06/g20_protest_messages_overshadowed_by_violence_and_arrests/

And why corral and hold people like animals, in the rain, for 3hours?

http://www.blogto.com/city/2010/06/police_trap_g20_protesters_at_queen_and_spadina/

Many questions need to be answered.

Store owners (many of whom were small family businesses not multinational corporations) get their stores trashed.

Police are simultaneously accused of not doing enough and doing too much.

The majority of protesters do were there to spread a message they care deeply loose any chance they have because they are over shadowed by the violence.

Seriously, next year the G20 leaders should invest in some decent teleconferencing software and saved us all the trouble. I doubt any of them will live up to any commitments made at this weekend the moment they aren’t in their own country’s best interest.

I am simultaneously outraged and saddened by what has occurred to my city this weekend. We didn’t ask for this. It’s not something we bid for or invited in.

I’m all for peaceful protest. But what those “black block” people are doing is wrong, very wrong. They’re costing themselves and their fellow citizens more in freedoms and actual dollars than they could ever gain with their wankery.

You point out the peaceful tea party protest, but you could point to many other peaceful protests as well, who get much less media attention for their peaceful and lawful actions. A friend who protested the war was rather frustrated by the tea party coverage, while the only time the anti-war lot got coverage a few years ago was when violence occurred…

The police arrest and abuse Guardina reporters doing nothing and stand by and let the brave masked ones go on. Shameful.

On a lighter note, this video from yesterday’s G8 protests was quite funny and cute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fhGneV6rQg