So, for anyone who hasn't been paying attention, there's been some crazy shit happening at G20 over in Toronto.
What I am talking about is the absolutely abhorrent behaviour of the Canadian Law Enforcement and anyone who is related to them in how they have been dealing with the G20 protests.
The short of it is this: They have been arresting, brutalizing and doing some of the worst imaginable things to people the vast, vast majority of whom have been peaceful protesters, and in many cases even peaceful bystanders.
The most sickening (and something I've heard multiple reports of) is discussed in this video. It is a journalist describing how women taken prisoner (again, most of which were peaceful bystanders or protesters who were not even read their rights or given a reason for arrest) were threatened with rape, gang rape, strip searched, and in some cases sexually violated by the cops.
http://vimeo.com/12925239
Another excellent demonstration of the disgusting force used by law enforcement can be seen in the following video. Protesters (Who even go to the point of chanting that they are peacefully protesting) are charged, beaten, and shot at by cops.
[ame]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiLt40d_AbU&feature=player_embedded[/ame]
Lastly, here is a very well written first hand account of how people who had committed no crime were treated. It is a long read, but serious worth it.
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=397205503638&id=511491565
There are a lot of more accounts of this stuff out there on the web right now.
Personally, all this has upset me a great deal. It's damaged my national pride (what the fuck, I thought we were supposed to be free), likely irreparably damaged my faith in our law enforcement and political leaders, disgusted me, and made me really realize how limited our freedoms truly are.
In my mind there is no excuse that can be made ever for this kind of shit. Absolutely none. As my girlfriend put it, even if she burned 30 cop cars, there is no justification ever for a cop to threaten to rape anyone. None.
Nor is there ever, at all, any justification for arresting people without having fucking good cause, without reading them their rights and declaring the reason for arrest. There is a damn good reason that the law dictates these things.
Finally, there is never, ever any justification for our law enforcement and political leaders to so strictly muzzle people's freedoms. Freedom of speech is not negotiable and should never, ever be compromised like this.
There is also no excuse for sitting by apathetically and letting this shit slide by. Even if all you do is spread the message so that people know what is happening, we need to atleast try to protect our freedoms, before we lose them.
In my mind those involved (The cops threatening rape, firing or beating on people, their leaders who ordered this bullshit, the politicians who enabled it, etc...) should all not only lose their jobs, but be treated as the criminals they are and be prosecuted.
When in the fucking hell did Canada start becoming North Korea?
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Being a Toronto boy myself, the G20 summit had made me feel sick - quite literally - a few times while it was happening. Even moreso as I am on the other end of the country.
Great post on this Mitch. I wish you were this passionate about game art.
I hate cops, but I also hate kids that are like cops are dicks. Cops are just doing their job and both the cops and kids are making stupid decisions, yelling at cops wont help, trapping people wont help. Protests are a chain reaction away from a mob/riot.
As for the non-peaceful protests... so far as I have seen there was one. Done by the black bloc, and from all the evidence, allowed to happen by the cops. I've seen quite a bit of info on it.
A good account of this is here:
http://www.therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5331&updaterx=2010-06-29+18:30:05
Basically, the point is that all evidence (And not jut from the above video) I've seen so far points towards the cops allowing the Black Bloc protest to happen to give them justification for their militaristic actions later.
Rwolf - Attributing this to "Oh, it's just G20 shenanigans" is ridiculous and inane. By way of example, G20 in Pittsburgh had a security budget of 12.2 million, compared with Toronto's 1 Billion (read that again, 12.2 million compared to 1 Billion). Pittsburgh had no major security breaches. Why did we have such a high security budget this time? Where did the cash go? Why, despite all that spending, have there been so many issues this time?
It's just sad that peaceful protesters, business and home owners get caught in the middle, especially with the two latter as they have not a shred of choice in the matter. Protesters can neglect to show up when the violence starts, which probably would be advisable.
Watch the videos. Read the articles. Research more (don't just look at what I posted, I could be biased), then form an opinion.
Coming in and saying shit like "Protesters should just not show up when the violence starts" is moronic.
There was no violence at all (except that done by the police). None. Zilch. Nadda.
In fact, the protesters were (as I mentioned) chanting that they were peaceful, while sitting down to show that they were peaceful.
No violence.
As for all this naive bullshit about protests being one step away from such and such or being bad in any way, or that if it looks like the protest could be strenuous just don't go... You are either ignorant, stupid, or downright evil. Come on guys. Without demonstrations and protests we'd still have slavery. Women would still be second class citizens. We'd still be under the tyrannical rule of monarchs. Learn some history for hells sake. Where do you think your fucking democracy came from.
PS: I'm ashamed of my heritage because we let this happen, because people generally respond as apathetically as has been well demonstrated in replies already, showing that they are happy to let this crap happen. Honestly, I am a part of Canada. If I want to take any ownership of that, it means the good and the bad. Right now the bad means that I am part of something which is currently allowing and shrugging off blatant human rights violations. Honestly, if people still this apathetic about this shit after hearing women were threatened with gang rape by cops, we have a fucking problem.
First, that was the only violence attributed to any protesters at any points so far that I am aware of.
Second, it was extremely suspicious. Every eyewitness report I've seen (which are numerous) have been pretty much in line with one another.
Those protests were performed by the Black Bloc, a group which is supposed to have been infiltrated by police already (meaning police would/should already have known that protest was planned.
Those protests happened on a street that was normally filled with cops, in an area where all other streets were heavily guarded and filled with cops.
The police cars everyone has seen burning were extremely suspect. They were left unattended, with windows down, in a vulnerable location, with no expensive electronics (computers and such) generally seen in police cars.
That protest went on for around 15 minutes. With the entire area swarming with cops (More cops than protesters a lot of the time) how in the hell did they get past even breaking one window. From my own experience here in Vancouver that shouldn't have even been possible. During the olympics the same black bloc tried the same shit during a protest. They managed to break 1 window and caused only minor damage before being taken down, and following that protests went on fine. How, with so much larger a security force in Toronto (1 mother fucking billion dollars!) did it go on for so long, with absolutely no police interference.
And again, that was the ONLY protest with any violence. It has been used as justification for mass arrests, police brutality, etc...
Seems suspect to me. Even if not suspect, seems a pointless argument. The police didn't do their job during that one protest, so because of that they get to arrest, beat, shoot at, threaten, and sexually violate people? I mean come on.
Also, for all that video you've seen of like 10 people breaking some windows, there is a fucking hell of a lot more (that you don't seen on fox news or CBC or whatever) of video of peaceful, happy protesters. By way of comparison, you can easily youtube some footage of a 25,000 person protest in which there is no violence, and no problems.
(By the way, sorry for the long replies (apparently no one reads them anyways), but there's a lot to be said on this, and for those who don't look past this thread they will never hear any of it).
The Black Bloc was a generally small incident that didn't last very long. It basically took place in an intersection or 2 where as protests were happening all over the city. Police took little action toward these people as well which lead people to believe they were planted there so the police could have an excuse. I've heard people saying that the police cars that were destroyed were retired cruisers removed of their electronics and abandoned on purpose. I don't know how true that is though.
Baw, I saw videos of people wrecking shops and so on, on the news?
My point was that the few violent ones makes the police agitated, which in turn makes them non-discriminately more violent to all protesters. I am not saying this is any shade of ideal, just that I understand how it happens, as morally abhorrent it is.
As for the "stay away" bit, it was more angled towards self preservation rather than the upholding of principles. Especially when things are shot and thrown. I mean, there are other ways of airing your dismay, that are just as powerful as a walk. Its about calculating risk, and then choosing your medium.
You do get exposure of the problem if you go out and get beat up by cops, but the question is, why not let the legal system handle it when this blows over? Because I'm sure most of your fellow Canadians agree that the police should not use excessive force.
I hope my argument is more clear now..
Most of those people had no idea stuff like that was about to go down. Most videos show people flipping out in dismay when police randomly decided they wanted to run in and beat people or carry them away and in a lot of situations people were not allowed to leave if they wanted to. There are a couple instances of police surrounding people and telling them to leave, closing in on them while they yell "where do you want us to go" and then be beaten and dragged away because they were surrounded. Peaceful protests were still being encouraged by police after the Black Bloc incident.
Pretty much this. Every G8/20 features police brutality. My guess is that there is greatly increased pressure on law enforcement and that makes them go nuts. The Canadians are really taking it to the next level though, some of the videos are crazy.
But yeah, I agree there's alot of bad shit going down over there. Rape-threats etc are waaaay over the top (even though it sounds... a bit crazy. Are you sure it's a peacefull bystander and not some seemingly peacful-demonstrator wanting to make press headlines?).
We have quite a bit of riots where I'm from aswell. Well, it's mostly the danish though since they're crazy. It's gone so far that every time there's a riot in either Copenhagen or Malmö they close the bridge... because so many more people will go over there just to fight.
People with power are most likely corrupt so they will abuse this
Edit: yes: [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAfzUOx53Rg&feature=related[/ame]
I'm not surprised that cops handle protesters roughly thats what cops do... they would give them flowers and silk shirts if they were meant to make friends with knuckle heads.
I wouldn't be surprised if some people flew in just to cause trouble, feel free to blame America we riot all the time down here, its a regular free for all most days but things have been kind of slow lately...
I'm a little disgusted by the cost too, 1 billion for a fence? I think they where smart to originally have it out in the sticks but moving it to Toronto it was a massive mistake.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128112738
With the Winter Olympics and now G20 its kind of like "hey what else can we get Canada to host so no one else has to blow obscene amounts of money on this stuff?"
They do this in the UK but it doesn't stop them being assholes still, there is a tube vid of UK coppers hog cuffing (hands behind the back and leg cuffing and slamming their face in to the dirt) 2 young mothers who were taking the polices photographs and capturing them on video. The UK police call these teams Forward information teams (FIT), and these two women are a part of a group called FIT-Watch, and there is a video from the polices point of view of these women asking for the FIT officer's identification number (which by law they have to give) then they suddenly rush the two women with 5+ coppers and arrest them for obstruction of justice then lock them up with no phone calls for 2 days. This is just one of many incidents recently, and with the new anti-terror laws, police officers here can arrest and detain you (and search you) with no reason what so ever.
It doesn't matter if the police use cameras, it matters more that the public are using camera's to capture shit like this.
I'm sure you'd say the same thing if you left a restaurant only to be told by cops you couldn't leave the street and were under arrest. And were then taken away for no given reason, and detained for days in bad conditions (I've heard some reports of people going up to 35 hours with only one meal, people being forced to stay in very cold cells with no shoes or anything, having to huddle inside porta pottys to stay warm, etc...).
And maybe you'd still say the same thing if your girlfriend, sister, or mother was detained for no given reason, strip searched by some rough, asshole, sexist cops, and had one of those jackasses shove his fingers insider her.
Yep, those damn dirty hippies should surely shut up.
Vig... yea, I feel like we are kinda being the world's bitch right now. :P We've not exactly been the cleverest nation recently.
That was also a crazy screwed up incident Rick. Was just reading up a bunch on it. It was a good thing the protesters involved in that one realized what was happening.
http://toronto.mediacoop.ca/story/conditions-g20-dentention-centre-are-illegal-immoral-and-dangerous/3918
Anyone, and I mean ANYONE who is going to try to defend the actions of the police NEEDS to read this first. There are no excuses. If this doesn't make you sick to your stomach, and fearful about your own rights, you have some serious issues.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSa9--NKKvI[/ame]
im really glad you posted all this stuff. i find i tend to stay in my own little world but seeing and reading all this stuff makes me realize how awesome the internet is. its a bummer that the cops use a few bad eggs to justify actions that seem out of the sixties. ive never had the chance to protest or anything, but im truly greatful for our ability to do so. im black, and without protests, rallys, and others before me fighting for something i know i wouldnt be were i am today. seriously, thanks for sharing all this, makes me wish i could be up there fighting with some of these people. the nike blac bloc member is pretty funny. from the digging ive done it seems to me that the blac bloc isnt what it used to be, and that actual bb members are more peaceful then the ones that commit stupid crimes. what a bummer for humanity and our rights.