"Where else would you go when you have an ax to grind?"

Thursday, July 01, 2010

Like this?

 Canada spent about a billion dollars on the G8/G20 summits and had an army of 20,000 cops on call with sound cannons, rubber bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, clubs, shields, body armour, horses, firehoses and everything else short of frickin' laser beams and yet couldn't stop 100 skinny little punks in black bandanas and hoodies -- a group they claimed to have infiltrated prior to the summits. (some might argue they had infiltrated them during the summit too)  Not only did they have the gear and manpower, they were even willing to completely make up imaginary laws to allow them to violate the rights of anyone they wanted to. Now it comes out that the cops were told to stand down on Saturday when the black bloc douchebags were having their little tantrum on Younge Street.

The conservative take on this whole thing has been to tar all the protesters with the same brush and blame the thousands of non-violent demonstrators who were exercising their rights as citizen for not doing the police force's job for them and physically confronting and stopping the terrifying masked anarchists on their own.

Like this guy did.

 

More here

1 comment:

Vindicator said...

Clearly, protesters physically confronting the black bloc was not an option.

But there were some other responsible and proactive options at their disposal.

For example, they could have expelled the black bloc protesters from their protests. Or, at the very least, moving away from the rioters.

It seems that many legitimately peaceful protesters didn't do this. Rather, they continued along their march routes while the rioters continued to smash and destroy in their midst.

It's not reasonable to expect peaceful protesters to physically confront the black bloc. But ask yourself honestly: did all the peaceful protesters act responsibly?