Outside of the obvious which is that any sane person that resides here would have stayed away from the area, such as I did although I do live northeast of the city and really have no reason to go down there unless it's to watch the sucky Blue Jays lose yet again. Which I did do the week of the G20 and surprisingly I think most people that live here did stay away as we just literally flew down the Don Valley Parkway. Took us maybe 40 minutes door to parking spot downtown, on a weeknight no less! This trip would usually take us at least an hour. (Wow, verbal diarrhea)
Ok, enough about my fun there. We saw lots of fences! And lots of cops...no, I mean we saw a LOT of cops. Everywhere you turned there were little posse's of them.
So, I had hoped that Toronto (the good) would show the world that as Canadians we are pacifistic and will lie down and take more McGuinty taxes up the butt because that's the way we are. Apparently not so- there were quite the few violent actions that occurred and while the protest started off peacefully. It quickly turned into a party with these black bloc morons getting involved as they have in the past G20's and this was no exception. Apparently they are anti-establishment and anti-anything resembling a sane person as shown by the following pictures I stole from the Toronto Star:
Take that! Tim Hortons, you capitalist bastards! Feeding off the lowly underpaid minimum wage earner while giving them a job and some work experience....oh, well hang on here's another one;
And you! Winners store selling last years hot fashions at reduced prices this year (some of which I'm wearing as I break your window), take that you bad people!
I got the old guy gang! Damn hippies!
I think these three are who I saw on tv, they came and sat down in front of the riot cops, most likely singing kumbaya or give peace a chance or such and then the cops charged at them, I'm sure scaring the crap out of them. Was very humorous.
The news clip didn't show them beating the crap out of them so I'm sure they just scared them is all.
RUN AWAY! THEY'VE GOT BLACK CLOTHES AND HOODIES ON!
Oh...you were just getting some friends in blacker clothes with attitudes.
Say hello to my leetle friend! Mr Boot up your ass!
Well....at least we didn't use the sound cannon.
Hey look! It's Ninjas!
Now this is interesting. The Star reported that this poor fellow was trying to put out the flames when he was overcome by smoke. However the photo blog I found these pictures on had no less than two comments from people saying they saw this guy get arrested for putting the po-po mobile on fire.
Oh is this your car officer? We were just pimping your ride dude!
One little question...why are so many people standing there? Watching? WTF?
I feel the same way honey.
I was really hoping Toronto would be the exception. Sadly, these people that came to vandalize our city found our address. I'm not labelling all of the protestors like this. Just the ones that did the damage. I do believe in freedom of speech and assembly. I do believe you have a right to peaceful protest if you like.
What I do have a hard time with is these jerks who dressed in black, labelled as "Anarchists" by the media who cost our city a fair chunk of change to repair the damage that was caused. On the Sunday of the conference, police raided a University of Toronto office and found people there with weapons and black clothing. Media attempted to interview one female as she was being led away and she spoke french, saying she didn't understand english.
Late Sunday around 4 pm police cornered a few hundred people at an intersection and rounded them all up. They all complained to the media as soon as they could. The way I look at this is the conference is over, time to go home folks. Nothing to protest anymore. So the police were just shutting this puppy down.
If the people don't like how the police acted there is always one thing that could have been done...nothing.
Pat's friend filmed a video of a looter breaking into the Bell store, stealing a phone and getting tackled by a pedestrian yelling "Don't steal!". It's been all over the news and has like a million Youtube hits - so, if I HAD actually wandered downtown, I could be an internet celebrity by now.
ReplyDeleteOr I could have been waiting for someone to bail me out of the detention centre...
I heard that Torontonomo Bay was not much fun...if they arrested you. But fortunately there were lots of cheese sandwiches to eat since none of these people were eating them so they could complain later when they got sprung.
ReplyDeleteOh yah, and there was an assistant crown attorney from Newmarket who grabbed a woman who was about to throw a rock through a window. Yay for him! sheesh. Thats' all he did and he was in the papers? Well better than most from what I saw that did nothing.
ReplyDelete