Black bollocks

[muckefuck]

So in addition to catching up on LJ entries (FB I had to write off--I can barely be bothered to keep up with it even when I'm not out frolicking every day) and porn installments, I did make an attempt during my lost weekend to resubmerge myself into the stream of current events. We received complimentary USA Today at the resort, so I wasn't totally in the dark about developments, but still I managed to miss out on quite a bit, notably the trashing of Toronto's city centre. Fortunately I had nitouche to direct me to Torontoist's Fourteen Essential Videos.

Pundits were quick to reassure me that, as G20 riots go, this one barely registered: no one killed or even seriously wounded, no real attempt to storm the barricades, etc. Am I the only one surprised to see the bar set so low? I mean, this is Canada, where trust in the police is high, corruption and serious crime are low, and there's no real tradition of violent street protest. Not to idealise our frosty brethren too much, but I can't help feeling that if they can't get the balance right, we don't even have a chance down here.

And I don't think they did. On the one hand, $1 billion Canadian for security, 15,000 riot control officers on duty, and they couldn't even keep a handful of punks from smashing up Yonge Street and burning several TPS cruisers. On the other, the largest mass arrests in Canadian history, innocent people held without charge in abusive conditions for over 24 hours, and assault of unarmed civilians. (I don't think I'll ever be able to hear "O Canada" again without thinking of that notorious baton rush of peaceable demonstrators.) Sadly, those incidents seem like further confirmation of the truism that when you put on riot gear, everyone begins to look like rioters. On the other hand, the failure to defend even Toronto Police Service property just looks like wanton stupidity. It's so egregious that despite my devotion to Hanlon's razor, I'm agnostic on provocateur explanations rather than dismissing them out of hand. At the very least, it tells me that whatever the $1 billion was spent on, it wasn't intelligence.

The most coherent explanation I've heard for why the Black Bloc were allowed to rampage for over an hour free from police interference is that the RCMP expected the primary assault would be on the Convention Centre and didn't want to lose officer strength snuffing decoy riots. But what most impressed me about raw footage of the rioters is how little effort it would've taken to stop them. There can't be more than a dozen or so actively engaged in destruction and even their efforts are laughable more often than not. An off-duty banker is all it takes to stop their looting and the presence of one or two mooks to keep them from smashing windows. (They don't even have to be security guards; note how the pizza place with two ordinary guys standing behind the door [7:46 on the CTV video] doesn't get touched while the neighbouring Quizno's is trashed.)

What most depressed me about the footage was the behaviour of the bystanders. Every time someone breaks a window, there's a ring of people with cameras recording the incident. When a lone citizen actually does step forward in order to prevent a vandal from smashing in a door, he's quickly mobbed by onlookers demanding he "leave him alone". Yeah, buddy, we came down here to see something. You with your outmoded civic-mindedness, don't interfere with the performance! It's disgusting, because whenever one of the "anarchists" is engaged, they quickly back down. They were cowards and bullies without even the wherewithal to overcome passive resistance. But the mere threat of their appearance justifies an outlandish police presence with sweeping powers, which in turn appears to validate their anti-authoritarianism. And it's the ordinary citizens, who just want to peacefully assert their right to disagree with their government, who get screwed.

No wonder I've been feeling so antisocial this week.

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what's most appalling. Some (presumably American) asshats posted to the discussion thread at Torontoist mocking the "so-called riot" because it wasn't as deadly or destructive as LA 1965 or 1992. But the crucial difference is that both of those were spontaneous uprisings in a part of town already deprived of proper law enforcement. This was in the heart of downtown when hosting an event that's been a magnet for trouble for decades. And all your mayor can say is that good thing we spent so much or it would've been worse? I can't imagine the destruction if this pack had been an actual anarchist cell instead of a clump of weedy disaffected teenagers.

[embryomystic.livejournal.com]

Thank you for being evenhanded about this. My Facebook feed has been bombarded by people intent on only showing one side of the stupidity, and I'm this close to locking pairs of them in a room together so they can fight it out, authoritarian versus, er, well, as you say, 'weedy, disaffected [twentysomethings]'.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

The saddest thing about the whole affair is that I watch those videos of police corralling protesters and what strikes me most is the breakdown of communication. There must've been some way for the police to deliver instructions and the protesters to express dissatisfaction without antagonising each other like this. What would've made the difference? More training? Fewer officers in riot gear and more in everyday blues? I don't know.

[gopower.livejournal.com]

Given the history of G20 protests, I don't know how accurate it is to describe any of the people there as "innocent bystanders." They knew, or should have known, what was going to happen and planned accordingly -- tourists/observers staying home and legitimate protesters staging at a separate venue.

Of course, the whole G20 exercise was a pointless waste of carbon that could easily have been phoned in.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Last things first: What is the purpose of G20 summits? To paraphrase someone in another thread, "Have they never heard of videoconferencing?" At the very least, why not meet at the same secure spot every year instead of inflicting huge security bills and social costs on various municipalities in turn? It's a public performance, but not everyone can on agree on what is being performed.

On the other point, I can't agree with you at all. For the vast majority of people who were on the streets, Toronto is their city. It didn't cease being their city just because some officials flew in for an ostentatious demonstration of their own importance. For many protesters, this was their only message: These are our streets, we won't be barred for them for the convenience of the few, and we don't give up our civil rights even for one day due to "security concerns". How anyone describing themselves as "libertarian" or "liberal" ("classical" or otherwise) could disagree with this message, I can't imagine.

Everyone knew the Black Bloc was going to stir up some shit during the summit; no one--least of all the police--knew where and when. As mentioned above, the authorities claimed in their public statements that they expected an assault nearer the conference site. Yonge Street was one of the venues for "legitimate protesters". You can argue that once they saw property damage was occurring, bystanders should've left immediately. But I would say they had a reasonable expectation that police would arrive soon to deal with the perps--just as they would have had on any ordinary day in the CBD. If you happen to be in a store where someone is shoplifting, do you cease to be an "innocent bystander" if you stick around to watch what happens? (After all, given the history of lossage at certain stores, you should know that shoplifting is going to occur again there sooner or later.) What if you're out and about on St Patrick's Day watching people get drunk and disorderly? What exactly makes those situations so very different from the one under consideration?

[lhn.livejournal.com]

I'm dubious about the G20 as a concept, and about the cost-benefit ratio of these meetings. But teleconferencing isn't really an adequate substitute for in-person meeting in a lot of cases. Even an introvert like me, who's generally happier if something can be dealt with by a phone call rather than a meeting, and better still an email rather than a phone call, has to grant that dealing with people in person forges a different kind of relationship, in ways that can be important. That's not all to the good (going out to the bar after a meeting can make it easier to get past future impasses, but it also offers opportunities for corruption and illegitimate favor-trading). But if there's any point to diplomatic meetings at all, then videoconferencing is going to be a poor second-best.

I'd also guess that the more separate from real cities and countries such meetings get (as moving to a special fortified venue would tend to move things), the more detached from their constituents' interests the people involved will become. (A problem already seen with Washington and Brussels, among other places.) But if there's no way of providing reasonable security at G20 meetings without turning the location into a police state (or worse, if that's done without even getting the security) then something will have to give on that point.