6/28/10

G2O PROTESTS IN "DEMOCRACIES"?

G20 2009 in Pittsburg:



Undercover officers have been seen doing things to incite violence at protests in several countries which is most likely done so they have an excuse to go after the protesters and simply clear them out of the area. It is an old trick. Just like FBI agents they are always dressed almost identical to each other making them easy to identify.



G20 protests in London 2009:

"Well we could start by shooting all the bankers, aha, hanging all the politicians, and aha then start with the journalists." Hey, I'm with this guy, as long as he agrees we should kill all the lawyers too.



This guy was not even a protester, seemed like he may have been hard of hearing or perhaps was not neuro-typical in some way and was simply trying to walk home.



There were three autopsies and it appears he died of abdominal bleeding, but the bleeding could have been from the CPR. The officer was never charged with any crimes. This man was actually attacked twice by the police while yelling that he lived close by and was trying to get home. Witnesses said that Mr. Thomlinson appeared terrified as he attempted to get through the area.

And now in 2010 in Toronto, not much has changed:

From The Raw Story:

TORONTO -- A government changes a law to allow police to arrest people without probable cause. It does so without any legislative debate. Then it keeps the change a virtual secret, until someone is arrested under those new powers.

The Soviet Union circa 1950? Nope. Try Canada, June 2010.



We are Borg, resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.



The riot police have masks on which means they fully intend to gas the crowd.




From the Guardian, by John Hilary:

To a foreigner, the Canadian police are a confusing bunch. With Toronto locked down for the G20 summit, several of them have been cycling around the deserted streets on mountain bikes presenting what we would see as the very picture of community policing. Yet side by side with this benign image is an intimidating, militarised presence that many Canadians feel has been deliberately cultivated in order to undermine their right to protest against the G20 and its damaging impacts.


The security operation on the streets of Toronto has provided Canadians with the greatest single talking point of the G20 gathering this weekend. Many locals are furious at the $1bn price tag for policing a summit which they never wanted to host in the first place. As John Clarke of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty pointed out, that same money could have paid for five years of the provincial food supplement programme that has just been scrapped in the latest round of austerity cuts.


The high level of militarisation that has been witnessed over the past couple of days has also been a major talking point, as Canadians are not accustomed to seeing such weaponry being so openly paraded at civil demonstrations. One small protest against poverty and homelessness in Toronto itself was quickly surrounded by vast numbers of police in full riot gear, including mounted police. More chilling still was the visible presence of heavily armed officers touting tear gas rifles and other firearms; police have also confirmed firing plastic bullets and pepper spray capsules at demonstrators on Saturday night.
Continued at the Guardian.

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Fabulous pictures of the protests and Anarchist violence can be found at The Toronto Star Photo Blog. Most of the portesters were peaceful, why the Anarchists had to show up and cause problems for everyone is beyond me. They even attacked journalists. Those who destoryed property should have been arrested/ The riot police however were arresting people who were peaceful.

John Cruickshank in an opinion piece from the Star:

The G20 security strategy has been spectacularly successful at cocooning the world’s leading politicians and staggeringly ineffective at protecting the property and peace of mind of Torontonians. And the one, inevitably, led to the other.

By bringing in thousands of heavily armed strangers and throwing up barricades everywhere to regular traffic, frightening off good and decent citizens, Canadian authorities created a ghost town in the heart of our city.\
Perfect for the political leaders. Protesters were kept blocks away from where the deliberations were going on.

And most protesters conducted themselves faultlessly as the global good and great met behind rings of gulag-like fencing and battalions of police beating Plexiglas shields with batons in a primitive show of might.
It was, however, less than perfect for the city, its businesses and its inhabitants. The only force that can prevent vandalism and mayhem in a city is the presence of its population. Surely that was the lesson every urban planner learned from looking south to the hollowed-out urban war zones of the United States in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
No police force, no matter how large, how well armed, how empowered to limit the civil rights of citizens, can stop vandalism in the empty shell of a city. Canadian authorities have proved that two days and nights running.
The strategy that ensured G20 leaders would never have to see a Canadian who wasn’t a politician, a police officer or a waiter lacked even a glimmer of common sense when it came to the security of Toronto and Torontonians.
They took our city to hold a meeting and bullied us out of the core, damaging the commerce of thousands of merchants and inconveniencing the entire population. Then, they failed to protect our property. Along Yonge St., as self-described anarchists were smashing stores unopposed, terrified merchants and their staffs sought shelter behind counters and in basements. If these establishments had been set alight, all of the thousands of fearsomely equipped police would have been able to do little more to save our citizens than they did to save their burning cruisers.
More at the Star.

These are not Democracies, they are Plutocracies.

First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

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