The Black Bloc in better times;
I have been involved in a wide array of coalitions on various issues over the past half-decade, and never have I witnessed cross-movement solidarity like I have in the anti-Olympics campaign. […] A strong example of that solidarity was on display during the February 12th “Take Back Our City” march. That march saw upwards of 2000 people march on BC Place during the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games. That march was lead by Indigenous women. When the march reached the police line outside of BC Place that night, the cops started pushing and shoving the front line of the stalled march. Indigenous women called for the Black Bloc to move to the front to hold the line. When the elders amongst that leadership group decided that the crush from the police was too much, the Black Bloc made space for them to move to the back of the crowd.
Emphasis mine.
You know, I can’t be the only one who finds the notion of a bunch of paper marxists whining about a police state ironic in the extreme.
It’s the closest they’ll ever come to experiencing the world they’re marching for – and still they’re not satisfied.
No, it’s not. It’s an idiot on a bicycle, carrying a cardboard sign.
Related: “Can’t they see I’m just a regular guy?”
I once had my car pulled over and searched 8 times in three hours by the RCMP.
We had a name for that, back when I was in high school. It was called “Saturday night”. The Carlyle RCMP detachment had 21 officers – for a town of 1200. They had to keep busy doing something when they weren’t up at White Bear or scraping bodies from Hwy 13. We got over it. In fact, I hate to break it to you, but policing in 2010 is far less arbitrary than it was in our parents’ day.
Still, could someone please tell me how police are supposed to track down young men matching the description of black bloc anarchists without actually stopping and searching people who fit the description?
I’m disappointed in you. When it’s middle class men educated in Pakistani madrassas near a high security zone, you’re all in for profiling.
But when it’s middle class men educated in Canadian universities near a high security zone, the rules become different.
A little consistency, please.
I have no sympathy for far-left idiots…
All products of the welfare-state / identity politics school of eternal delinquency. The guy on the bicycle has just come from a CBC job interview and is rumoured to be on the short list as host for another exciting poltical talk show.
Fox’s Bill O’reilley has a excellent take on Toronto’s G20 submit and the violent “criminal” (His word) element…He also touches on Obama being isolated by the rest of the free world who want to stop spending:
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/index.html
Another irony from those on the left is that the ones who are convinced the Harpers and Bushs of the world are determined to stamp out democracy and sell them all into slavery are also for gun control.
“Harper is an evil genius who wants to turn Canada into a dictatorship, let’s give him all our guns.”
That’s even better than the Syd Ryan comment. I may steal that for my masthead, Stan.
I’m with you on this one, Kate. As I read about the more aggressive police action yesterday, I wondered why no one seemed outraged about the rioting. The police tried the kinder, gentler approach the day before, and it did not work.
So the fractious protest groups are coalescing into one havoc reeking anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, anti-honky machine. These homos (no homo) have become so obtuse that they revel in the fact that they are blowing their own tactical cover on all fronts. Retards!
A short clip with a looter that feels cheated. Must have been a tourist on the street..
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bf4_1277759035
So the Black Block tactic is the Golem that the left has adopted.
The result wiil be the same.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem
The best example of the progressive moron spoiled child syndrome was some pierced young lady being interviewed on TV and complaining that she wasn’t served a vegan meal while she was held in detention.
Such a travesty of her Human Rights.
When all is said and done there was little damage done: a few burnt cars and some shattered glass. No lives were lost, so serious injuries and above all we set a new standard on how to deal with the chronic malcontents. Notice how no teargas was used. What was used was mock teargas made up of talcum powder and pepper spray. No one ever reported smelling tear gas. Of course the loony left doesn’t know this
Yes, there were 19K people there but not all were deployed at one time. They worked on shifts.
Compare Toronto’s event to Quebec City’s and you will see a new standard was set.
Every time I read or see something about the events over the week-end, I can’t help but think of the story about the French police who chase a fleeing criminal into a large building and then decide to surround another building because it’s a more manageable size.
It seems to me that Blair’s plan must have looked something like this:
1: Saturday-Show up but don’t do anything, no matter what happens in front of you.
2: Saturday night-Check the news coverage to see how number 1 is being reported.
3: Sunday-Adjust force to counteract #2.
As I see it, Kate, the difference is consistency. When I was young, I knew that there were certain lines that, if crossed, would likely lead to a beating by someone in a uniform. I almost always stayed on the comfortable side of that line.
On the other hand, who could watch the criminal mayhem on Saturday and the resultant police indifference and expect that you might get roughed up just for being there on Sunday?
MHO,
Had the police created a line on Saturday and sent a message like, “Here lies a line. Anyone who crosses it is going to get f**ked up”, they wouldn’t have had any trouble after a very short time. Instead, they kept moving the line back as the day went on and then decided to move it up again on Sunday, after the idiots were, for the most part, gone.
Pathetic people. What more can be said?
I would like to see how long they would last in a true dictatorship. What a bunch of nobs.
A little consistency please.
Okay, fair enough. I assume there will be no more snide posts on SDA about police intimitading citizens opposed to windmills in Ontario or police harassing people selling wheat, etc. Oh that’s right, that’s wrong of the cops cause it involves the right kind of people protesting. Got it.
Soccermom – fine, don’t have any sympathy for the leftie idiots. As Kate says, be consistent, no complaining then when it’s our turn.
“I assume there will be no more snide posts on SDA about police intimitading citizens opposed to windmills in Ontario or police harassing people selling wheat, etc”
When the landowners and farmers start torching storefronts and assembling weapons caches in university buildings, I’m all in.
A little consistency, please.
Thanks Kate, it’s all yours.
Correct the spelling, the grammar, add a laugh track etc etc…
Congratulations BTW!
Slaw, you can consider yourself smacked down.
Bravo, Kate!
Dead on Fred – Spoiled child syndrome.
Semi-literate college students who PowerPoint their way through exams trying to live up to the relevancy bar that the adults around them set while they were growing up. They create some vague target of a plundering immoral strawman that they must confront and defeat.
The protests never achieve anything except personal self-satisfaction, drama and bragging rights come September. Not surprising though. For many, their liberal arts and social science degrees generally produce as much or less. If they could detatch themselves from their self-gratifying, self-centered and low risk universe for just one summer break, they’d go back to school in the fall and work towards achieving a medical, engineering or business degree where they could actually make a difference in the lives of those they claim to speak for.
It always amazes me how, in the span of just a decade or less, kids can graduate from EZ-Bake Ovens and Pokemon cards to having all of the right answers to all of the world`s problems. Stunning.
I am struck by the similarity between the black bloc who wear ordinary clothing and hide in groups of ordinary protesters before they start their destruction and the jihadists who hide amoung us before they unleash their terrorist attacks. It seems to me that people have been struggling for a lable for the black bloc. Would terrorist be too much of a stretch? Would it be too much to expect that they be treated as such?
Isn’t it ironic and moronic, that arrested anarchists want to claim their civil rights have been violated, when by definition arachists don’t believe in the existence of civil rights.
And if you want to gather in the middle of a potential shit storm, expect to get by hit by some shit Mike Brock.
Some pretty stunning irony in that deep work by Alex the Black Bloc lover:
“The anarchists who participate in the Bloc are for the most part solid community organizers…”
Moron graduates of the Marxist indoctrination centres some Canadians still insist on calling universities.
Duck Mountain brings back millions of good memories… 😉
… including the multiple “so what are you boys up to this morning?” strange that I didn’t feel profiled?
and Marxists crying about a “police state” is offensively stupid to anyone who’s ever known one.
I still am not pleased at harper’s spending on this one.
Why have the damn conference in a major city? If it was punishment for Toronto, I can sympathize. They do deserve a bit of chaos…
BUT, why set up a riot then spend 1 billion taxpayer dollars on blue-clad SPECTATORS???!!! Exactly what f’ing good are cops who don’t do their jobs? That isn’t a cop, that’s a clock-watching government hack collecting pension credits at our expense.
If you want to stop a bunch of rioting creeps, don’t hire 19k cops to sit back and watch at great public expense, set up a few dozen hunters and put them on rooftops with orders to cap anyone with a weapon in hand and anyone who commits a violent act of any sort. Not only would you not have to pay them, you could charge them licensing fees and set no bag limit. After the first few anarchists hit the ground in an eruption of their own Molotov cocktail, a double-quick-time conversion back to the rule of law would occur. The remaining offenders would go back to their parents places in Rosedale.
It seems the only thing consistent about our leftards is their breathtaking inconsistency.
BTW Slaw…Would your first name be Cole?
Syncro
The police did at least keep the conference attendees secure. That was presumably given them
as their principal task.
There certainly should have been two groups of
paramilitary police available: one to maintain the
security perimeter, and the other for ordinary
policing, i.e. in this case preventing destruction
of property.
Why hold such a meeting in a large city? As far
as ordinary rioters go, a rural location would
be better. However, if one supposes as one must,
that real terrorists might use sniper fire (max
range about 2.4 km), RPGs (several hundred metres?)
and light mortar fire, a built-up city becomes
a better venue. Serious street-fighting is
notoriously difficult.
Jason – the G20 meeting should be held downtown Toronto because Toronto is part of Canada and governed by Canada, not Tamils, not Marxists, not CAIR, not even unemployed, Birkenstock-wearing vegans: Canada. If there is the slightest perception that we can’t hold an international meeting in TO, we need to hold an international meeting in TO.
The cops did a beautiful job of demonstrating their total ineffectiveness. They stood by while the violent hooligans want on a rampage, and then cornered the peaceful protesters and arrested them. They couldn’t/wouldn’t do anything about the real problem but racked up the easy arrests to get the numbers to justify that obscene Billion dollar insecurity cost.
The sad part of this anarchy is that many good people have forgotten that there is a difference between “freedom and License”.
Democracy should never be defined by the anarchists themselves or their biased companions.
If this doesn’t prove how our culture has turned adults into children. Nothing will.
Where are the adults anymore?
Oh yeah, hiding from the CHRC.
What I don’t understand, is how come the soccer and hockey hooligans let slip past them a perfect opportunity to have some fun with the Black Bloc?
There is a deep-set rot in the higher ranks of the police (both city and OPP). The PC multi-culti virus has made sponges of their brains. There is a perfectly useful criminal charge which could have been used at any time on Friday, Saturday or Sunday to cool things down.
Criminal Code section 63(1): An unlawful assembly is an assembly of three or more persons who, with intent to carry out any common purpose, assemble in such a manner or so conduct themselves when they are assembled as to cause persons in the neighbourhood of the assembly to fear, on reasonable grounds, that they
(a) will disturb the peace tumultuously; or
(b) will by that assembly needlessly and without reasonable cause provoke other persons to disturb the peace tumultuously.
Section 351(2): Every one who, with intent to commit an indictable offence, has his face masked or coloured or is otherwise disguised is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years.
That is, 3 masked black-bloc hoodies are an unlawful assembly, quite likely intending to commit vandalism, or encourage others to do so.
The police should not have allowed ANYONE to walk the streets of Toronto wearing a mask. Period.
But the cops on the street were probably instructed to ‘avoid any hint of brutality’, when they should have been carving the masked idiots out of the crowd.
How am I smacked down? Who is arguing that the police should not have arrested people committing crimes? Not me.
Kate is arguing that the police have the authority to stop anyone they please cause they might resemble someone who has done something bad – I am positing that argument is nonsense. Apparently, she is also arguing that the police should be able to arrest journalists and bystanders cause they are in the wrong place. Again, if you agree with that then fine, but remember, the same arguments they are using to do this stuff are the same arguments they will use to come after you.
Coleslaw
Maybe it’s time for an intervention.
Howz about if the po-lice stop people that present the opposite of the suspects they are watching for?
Sounds like nonsense eh?
Syncro
I don’t know what depresses me most. The destruction, the stupidity of the demonstrators, the haphazard police response, the hand wringing politicians or the waste of money on a G-20 summit in the first place.
Still, could someone please tell me how police are supposed to track down young men matching the description of black bloc anarchists without actually stopping and searching people who fit the description?
Easy. Follow the media. They had no problem finding guys smashing windows at arguably Toronto’s most major intersection and guys getting out of the black garb, smack in the middle of the financial district, in order to blend in with the crowd.
Iowahawk on Twitter: “Rage Against My Allowance in Toronto; acne anarchist rampage against global capitalism, popular kids”
http://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/status/17351528239
felis @ 2:21 & marc @ 2:46 say it well.
However it is not these dimwitted useful idiots that we have to worry about in the long run, it is the ones pulling their strings, such as Sid, Judy and Jack et al. The Marxist handlers would have no compunction shooting these people when they take control.
I’ll ask again the important question that no one seems to be asking: How is it we held the G8 in Kananaskis with almost no grief (right after Seattle to boot), and yet all this nonsense in Toronto?
And I’ll answer my question: the police quietly detained the “professional demonstrators” as they showed up–they all have lengthy criminal records–and stopped any shenanigans quickly (and inexpensively) before they got out of hand. Not in a major centre made it easier but not critical.
Agreed Kate. These naive protesters are getting what they are asking for, but a tad bit kinder.
Maybe the solution is to give them fully what they want.
Toronto’s Marxist dykes are also protesting at Police HQ now. Something about the cops (or the police brass) only pretending to be supporting Pride Week. I didn’t bother listening to the rest of the asshole’s explanation to discover the rest of the twisted logic used.
pete e,
fine. hold it in toronto – with 100k worth of snipers instead of a billion spent on clock-watching spectators.
Funny, I was formerly a supporter of the police… now? I see them as no different than federal social workers and every bit as useless. Unless it comes to harassing normal people.
The policing at the G20 was a cluster F**k. No other conclusion is possible from watching the videos. It was virtually a repeat of Caledonia and Ipperwash where the thin blue line sat by watching violent punks trash private property and threaten private citizens but would gang tackle or threaten any peaceful citizen who protests their inaction.
That’s the “consistency” in Ontario police policy – pick targets who are not inclined to offer violent resistance to arrest.
Give em the white feather.
the police response has the tell-tale fingerprints of DiltonMcDickwad. 2cents
Your analysis is staggeringly stupid:
Because some nihilist nobodies and vandals make anti-cop noise, you reminisce fondly on your own adolescent roustings by police, concluding that a Police State is not such a bad thing.
I think that says more about you than you know.
You’re also dead wrong: policing was not only far less intense in our parents’ and grandparents’ day, it was also less arbitrary.
But I guess that brings us to telling point #2: you think Trudeau improved things on the police vs citizen front.
Gotta love you Big Government Conservatives.
Wow, Kate you just got owned by JC. Oh, and it’s easy to find the Black Bloc folks: they’re the ones smashing windows, primed for semi-violent takedown, not the guy named Mike Brock sitting on the bench far away from violence but primed for etremely dickish harassment by the authorities. It’s a rich irony that Kate is okay with a default police state where the only thing necessary for a police search is a…BlackShirt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackshirts).
syncro – here’s a novel idea: how about the pol-ice arrest the people committing the actual crimes rather than journalists and bystanders? how about the police not lie to the public about what powers they have (i.e. 5-metre rule) and arrest people unlawfully? there is a reason only 40% of the people arrested were charged with anything.
again, it is fine if you are okay with this. just remember, when you are at your anti-hst or anti-abortion rally they will be using the same rationale to arrest you.
@ Cyto: sorry, bro, didn’t mean to cast aspersions, in any sorta Freudian fashion, on your blog mistress’ affection for a Police State whose sole purpose was to protect the socialist parasites pantomiming at G20.
My bad.
LOVE this line, tho: “What we really need is anarchy. With a strong anarchist as leader.”
Now if only Kate understood anarchism.
JC, cytotox and Slaw
I think Kate is to polite to say this – but I’m not. Get a room!
Coleslaw
This has been gone over once but for shits and giggles let’s try again.
In doing so I must defer to the expertise of TVO anchor Steve Paiken.
Mr. Paiken in an interview on QR77 last night pontificated about the three “baskets” of protesters present in Toronto.
Basket one held the “legitimate protesters”…the Sid Ryans and Naomi Kleins if you will.
Basket two held the Black Bloc…renegade bad boys intent on having a “voice”.
Basket three he typified as “riot tourists”…If you watched any of the raw video feed you would recognize this crowd as the 1/3 with cameras.
Mr. Paiken went so far as to describe much of what happened as “street theatre”.
So…using Mr. Paiken’s math one could surmise that approximately 33% of the crowd were violent idiots, approximately 33% were wanna be idiots worshiping at the feet of the alpha idiots and most of the rest were aging hippies and up and coming “photo journalists”.
The perfect circle jerk.
Yet nobody died.
Syncro