What the actions of the Surete du Quebec years before have to do with the actions of the Toronto police had to do a few weeks ago, I have to admit, totally escapes me. Because different cops did X back then, an obviously absurd accusation (that a guy must be an undercover cop because he’s wearing an item of clothing with a Nike logo on it) is anything other than ridiculous?
Of course it’s ridiculous. Seriously, “the vandals were anarchists and an anarchist would never wear Nike so that guy’s a cop” doesn’t sound absurd to you?
Who would have thought that anarchists all on their own would do anarchistic things at protests? No, it must be the government who ‘baits’ them into doing it, or does it for them. I’d be ashamed to be call myself an anarchist if I needed the government to start my riots for me. Sheesh.
Do some people really believe that specially trained riot police want to burden themselves with all that kit and then not get to test it out? They are more than likely praying for it to go off as they lace up their boots. Or brand new, unscuffed Air Max trainers, as the case may be.
I can believe that. That’s like asking if I want to test out my car’s air bags. After all, I paid for them.
Furthermore, even if we assume some cops wanted to mix it up - and I’m certain some do - that is not evidence that the police planted agents provocateurs among the protesters. “I think that they would do X” is not evidence. And you’re not even that close; your position is “I think the cops wanted to do Y, so it’s likely they did X to cause Y to happen.”
When you have some evidence, come back and post it.
Sometimes, when you don’t have rock-solid evidence of wrong-doing, you have to make suppositions based on what little information is freely available. If you want to believe law enforcement spokespeople when they say that they don’t do these sort of things, that is your prerogative, but don’t expect everyone to fall for it.
Says the guy who never met a conspiracy theory he couldn’t believe in. What’s been presented in this case is two data points:
Based on photographic evidence, some protesters were dressed in a fashion some find incongruous.
Some years ago a different police force admitted to having undercover cops infiltrate a protest.
From this “evidence” you propose that we ought to conclude that the OPP instigated the worst violence of the protest.
That is ridiculous on its face.
Here’s what we should conclude based on the “evidence.” The OPP might have had plainclothes officers infiltrate the protest. Perfectly reasonable to suppose they might have. Not without precedent, and the video evidence while as far from conclusive as one could imagine is nevertheless moderately suggestive.
But of course, having plainclothes officers in the protest is hardly an outrageous thing to have done. In fact, I hope they did. Having someone amongst the protesters could give the police valuable information about when and if things looked to be turning ugly. However, it’s a huge leap to go from having infiltrators to having agents provocateur. For that proposition we have no evidence whatsoever.
So it’s not that a police denial trumps the evidence in favour. It’s that there’s bugger all for evidence in favour in the first place even granting the most charitable interpretations of that “evidence.”
I think the bottom line for me (including Gorsnak’s excellent summarization) is that plainclothes police officers instigating a riot does not pass Occam’s Razor. I can think of no good reason for them to do so. I can think of good reasons for plainclothes police officers to be in a crowd that has the potential to riot as peace officers.
I am also fond of Occam’s Razor but apparently, at least in Italy, plainclothes police officers have been known to behave in this manner. This is from Wikipedia, so it is certainly open to scrutiny.
"Francesco Cossiga, former head of secret services and Head of state of Italy, advised the 2008 minister in charge of the police, on how to deal with the protests from teachers and students:[8]
He should do what I did when I was Minister of the Interior. […] infiltrate the movement with agents provocateurs inclined to do anything […] And after that, with the strength of the gained population consent, […] beat them for blood and beat for blood also those teachers that incite them. Especially the teachers. Not the elderly, of course, but the girl teachers yes."
There is a much larger quote, in Italian, which this is drawn from. I remain open to the possibility that the former Head of State of Italy is being misquoted, or that his words are being cherry-picked.
Now I certainly don’t think in this case that this demonstrates WHY anyone would want to do this. Just that it has been known to happen, even in western democracies. I am in no way implying that because this appears to have happened at one time in Italy that it means that it happened at the G20 in Toronto. Other disclaimers may appear later depending on how this thread progresses.
Or the simplest explanation is that the vast majority of violence that happens at protests is the result of the actions of the protesters. They can claim that the police ‘egged’ them on, but only they are responsible for their actions. No one was forcing them to show up to protest.
Yeah, fuck you people with genuine grievances to protest against. Some of us are trying to get to work, or do our shopping. Selfish fucking assholes, do your protesting from your armchair, like me!
Name one group of people at that protest that could not have addressed their ‘situation’ with their elected representatives directly?
Given all the media coverage of the event, I don’t even know what the protesters were protesting. Were they protesting the G20 (elected representatives getting together to resolve issues: seems stupid to protest that), were they trying to save the whales, or just trying to set cop cars on fire? So, they were effectively wasting their time and stopping people from going to work and shopping. Selfish assholes, indeed.
Who’s got a problem with peaceful protests? Besides Uzi, I mean.
There are protests going on in Toronto RIGHT NOW. There have been demonstrations every weekend since the G20 and were demonstrations every weekend before the G20 going back at least two months. They seem to be peacefully conducted.
People have a right to protest (as long as they don’t inconvenience me or other people minding their own business).
This is different from my opinion that the vast majority of protests are a colossal waste of time and effort. As I said earlier, I have no idea what the protesters were protesting at the G20. All the news I saw was about the vandals. So, any message was lost in the noise and they might as well have not been there. By them not being there they limit the ability of the vandals to use them to hide among.
And who decided to focus on the “newsworthy” slant of “Anarchists cause trouble at demo.”, rather than the actual issues behind the protests? It’s almost as if the news media were hoping it kicked off so they could avoid addressing anything else.
Maybe the issues behind the protests aren’t newsworthy compared to the violence?
Just because you think something is important doesn’t mean anyone else does.
The issue is that the violent protesters are a bunch of ill-informed idiots who are upset at their own economical situation and therefore think property destruction is justifiable retribution for the shitty life they’ve allowed themselves to wallow in.
If they spent that much energy actually working, or at least looking for work, we’d all be better off.
