You are pretty old fashioned. Everyplace they go they get the same kind of reception. This is not new or a rare Canadian trait. They suck up a billion dollars of a countries money, get their police force to work for them and face hatred from the people.
But they don’t leave a paper trail. Emails would. The nutters inside the conferences should stay home. The people live there.
Pick an issue–any issue. Global warning, the seal hunt, environmentalism, abortion, the tar sands, Marxism, Communism, trade unionism, Quebec separation, Alberta separation–I’d bet that all those and more must have had somebody there protesting for or against them. Problem is, that speeches and polite crowds and people marching peacefully provide little in the way of hard news. Destroying property does provide hard news, but at the cost of the lost message of the more peaceful protestors. It seems to me it’s a Catch-22: peaceful protests are so common that they are not newsworthy, while violent protests get news coverage but do not get the protestors’ messages out there.
A well-orchestrated lobbying campaign of elected representatives, coupled with a coordinated PR effort to get the word out to the public, would probably do more for any issue’s protestors than wandering along a Toronto street, carrying a sign, and hoping that the evening news crew focuses on your group in the crowd.
There you go, being all rational and shit again. 
Don’t y’all just hate it when that happens in a Pit thread?
Gosh, I dunno. The post immediately before this one?
Or this very post?
So you might think they have a right to do it, but you still don’t seem to like it. So you do in fact seem to have some level of problem with it, even if that problem doesn’t extend as far as “they shouldn’t be allowed to do it.”
Sorry. I’ll try to ramp up the crazy outrage.
Um–when the anarchists… No, that won’t work.
Hey, y’know, the police… No, that won’t work either.
Sorry. Guess crazy outrage just isn’t my thing.
I see a lot of people here have not marched for a cause. I marched for civil rights and later to end the war in Viet Nam. You know damn well the police will brutalize you . You know damn well they will jail innocent people to break up a demonstration. They have no care about beating people who offer no defense. It is what they do.
My favorite is the old" someone threw a bottle at the cops trick’. That is police talk for we are going to kick some ass and love every minute of it. There is almost never a bottle thrown.
“Peaceful” protest. I have no problem with it, none at all, as long as they don’t unduly get in other people’s way going about their regular business. It is most likely a colossal waste of time, imho, but it is their time, so I have no problem with it.
I do have a problem with my country having to spend a billion dollars because of these ‘peaceful’ protesters, though. But that isn’t really the fault of the protesters, but the fault of our government. They could have held the
Oh oh, someone cut off Uzi in mid-sentence. Was is the police or was it the anarchists?
They don’t have to spend a dime. They do it to keep the protesters away at the orders of the big shots. Let them march in front of the damn buildings where they are. The immediate police oppression causes most of the trouble. Most protesters just want to show they don’t approve of the banksters and politicians looting the people. They don’t really want to get clubbed and jailed. It is no fun.
Dying…Must.click.submit…Aack!
People live longer and have better lives with more options than any previous point in our history. What exactly are these politicians and bankers doing now, that this current state is threatened?
And if one of those big shots (eg, our elected representatives) gets hurt or killed by these ‘peaceful’ protesters?
To carry on my previous thought before I died from an overdose of Timbits, the politicians could hold these events away from areas where protesters can easily get access to.
Not on the scale that the G20 was at. If you wanted to hold it elsewhere you’d either have to scale back the scope of the event or simply rack up cost in creating accommodations.
One suggestion I heard, and initially thought wasn’t a bad idea, was that it could have been held at CFB Trenton or CFB Kingston; in both cases you have army bases next to cities, but the bases are slightly separated from the towns and have built-in security features and plans, making security easier.
But then it occurred to me; where the hell would you put all the delegates? The U.S. delegation to G20 was something like SIX HUNDRED PEOPLE. I doubt Trenton has six hundred decent hotel rooms. Kingston has more but you still have to put up the UK delegation, the French, the Canadian themselves, and on and on. Thousands of delegates came, working on a zillion side committees. I doubt even Kingston would have had the facilities. 2,000 people can be accommodated in Toronto with ease; in a small town, not so much.
Anyone see if Smash The State made an appearance?
At the time, I did surf around certain news and other sites looking for mention of him as a participant in the Toronto events, but found nothing. I would imagine that he was there though–it was the kind of thing he’d be likely to want to attend.
A bunch of ATCO trailers in the wilderness should suffice. It might cut down on the people wanting a free trip vs. a real need to meet with counterparts if they knew it wasn’t 5 star accommodations. Assuming such boondoggling occurs in government…Man, hard to type that one with a straight face:)
Stick the fuckers in tents with a food budget of a dollar a day, and let them feel how those at the bottom end of the earnings spectrum get by in this world they are creating.
Stick the anarchists in tents that they make themselves, do not give them a dollar a day, and have them live up in northern Ontario, so as to let them have a taste of the world they are trying so hard to create.
A million disorganised anarchists will cause less harm to this planet, than a few dozen very well organised “world leaders” who are allowed to do their business without having to worry about pesky protestors.
Especially if the anarchists are in northern Ontario.