Players:- the Black Bloc, whoever they are; motives, radicalize the rubes, have some fun at Toronto's expense.
- the current federal government with an assist from Ontario's cabinet; motive, to make Stephen Harper look tough and as an upholder of order against chaos, unlike all those wimps who keep talking about civil liberties. (Ontario government motives: ??)
- the Ontario and Toronto police; motives, to acquire new security toys and a mandate to use them. See "wimps who keep talking about civil liberties," above.
- ordinary protestors who didn't see the trap and their own roles in the play.
- ordinary Torontonians and other Ontarians, including especially those ordinary resident of the university area who are being dragged in entirely for being in the wrong place; they thought they weren't in the play at all, but they are paying for the tickets, the theater, and the cleanup.
- the rest of Canada gets to pay, too.
Update:
I kinda agree, Steve, but very wealthy elites are running rampant right now.
ReplyDeleteHow can they not expect riots in the streets?
In this little corner of the world, we don't expect riots and we seldom get them. This wasn't the oppressed rising against wealthy members of the elite, but two armed groups playing a game at the expense of everyone else, including the vast majority of the demonstrators.
ReplyDeleteA perfect illustration of how things work: Much play was given to a burned police car. But how did it come to be burned? It seems that a damaged police car was left on Queen street for several hours, and the street was left for the Black Bloc clowns to play in. Why wasn't the police car towed away? Do police normally leave a damaged car lying around for vandals to play with? Of course not. The car was left there SPECIFICALLY TO BE BURNED, and to supply the requisite footage.
ReplyDeleteA number of years ago, Toronto's police staged a phony "riot", which I was a close witness to. Before the "riot", I observed them encouraging street toughs to go "where the action will be", and hinting broadly that they wouldn't mind if a few windows were broken. Cameramen on a TV crew told me that the police had instructed them where to position their cameras. Crowds were herded into a confined space on Gould Street by barriers and a police sweep, then intimidated by a wall of police on horseback. Despite all these efforts, the crowd did nothing resembling a riot, and the only damage was a window broken by the press of people squeezed against a wall. Photos of this broken window were broadcast around the world as proof that Toronto had experienced a "race riot".
That is how things are done. I stayed clear of the events of the G20 as much as I could, but I have no doubt whatsoever as to the motives and methods of the powers that be. They LOVE the Black Bloc, and they LOVE the demonstrators spouting inane slogans and incomprehensible jargon. These ninnies make the authorities look good, and firmly link in the public mind any kind of opposition with idiots and dangerous crazies. They also ensure that the press spends not a second reporting or evaluation the actual goings on at the summit.
Groups like the Black Bloc are sure to be riddled with CSIS and RCMP agents, urging them on to commit acts of vandalism --- acts that not don't affect the summit delegates (who never see them, or give a hoot), but do affect the citizens of the "host" city, and please the media looking for action where they would otherwise have to show nothing but pictures of men in suits standing aroung chatting. This kind of agent provocateur tactic is standard procedure.
Canada has a long history of creating media events in just this way. The Nelson Mandela "spontaneous running onto the airfield" event, the "runway sit-in" in Gander by Inuit protesting NATO fighter planes practicing over their ancestral hunting grounds, the unpleasantness at Oka. These are ones that I was personally involved in, and that experience has permanently coloured the way I view the "news".
ReplyDeleteSo Steve, lest any one say this post is some sort of conspiracy theory, I can assure you and your readers that it is right on the money.
Not just Canada. The recent anti-G20 demonstrations in London, in which an attack was made by protestors on the premises of the Royal Bank of Scotland, then recently bailed out of bankruptcy by the taxpayer, becomes a little messier when one has eye-witness reports that that window was the only one in the street not boarded up and that the police were not stationed in front of it but on either side. They wanted to make sure something happened to justify the methods they were, as we now know, going to use in suppressing the demo.
ReplyDeleteThese techniques are documented in many times and places. Journalists, as well as those who study history or politics, should have smartened up to them long ago. I'm sure they were familiar stuff to Qin Shi Huang or Xerxes. They work precisely because those who are supposed to be our guardians against deceit (the Press, the academic community) prefer instead to adopt the roles of shills and marks at the carnival.
ReplyDelete