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G-20 Summit in Toronto

The Black Bloc is not a group. It's a strategy for turning a protest into a rampage. Any group can adopt the strategy.

A black bloc is a tactic for protests and marches, whereby individuals wear black clothing, scarfs, ski masks, motorcycle helmets with padding or other face-concealing items and often carry some sort of shields and truncheons. The clothing is used to avoid being identified, and to, theoretically, appear as one large mass, promoting solidarity or creating the illusion of a larger group.

The tactic was developed in the 1980s by autonomists protesting squatter evictions, nuclear power, restrictions on abortion, among other things. Black blocs gained broader media attention outside Europe during the 1999 anti-WTO demonstrations, when a black bloc damaged property of GAP, Starbucks, Old Navy, and other retail locations in downtown Seattle.

"The Black Bloc" is sometimes incorrectly reported as being the name of a specific anarchist group. It is, rather, a tactic that may be adopted by groups of various motivations and methods.
 
doady said:
It seems to me that the whole focus of the police all along was not to control the violent protesters, but to control the peaceful protesters and to control the media. That's why all of the people arrested or beaten by police are all peaceful protesters or media and not a single formal charge has been laid.
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What is the purpose of that? What is the purpose of deliberately pissing off peaceful people, and in particular riling the media? Why are most conspiracy theories so non-sensical?
 
buildup said:


What is the purpose of that? What is the purpose of deliberately pissing off peaceful people, and in particular riling the media? Why are most conspiracy theories so non-sensical?
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Agreed. No conspiracies, the police brutality simply comes down to incompetence, and the mindset of the people they recruit, who are often little better than the gangs they are supposed to police. Some of these thugs are on a power trip, and any chance to hit someone who they've already got in restraint, fulfils some perverse urge. Not sure where people get the conspiracy idea ...
 
At this point, with hearing conflicting stories about the events on the sunday I really don't know what to believe anymore.

So I concede that it seems that the police did in fact overreact in some incidences involving people who were passing through the area and not involved with the protests and being questioned and detained. So I'm apologizing for my earlier remarks that anyone in the vicinity and was subjected to police tactics was justified.

That being said, I still maintain that if a crowd of people refuse to cooperate with the police and the final response is reasonalbe force then sometimes this needs to be done. I work in a hospital and I've seen how security deals with difficult patients and potentially violent moments. Was it necessary on sunday? I don't know. I can only conclude that they had orders to use force.

As for exsessive force? I'm still skeptical of some of the allegations being made about widespread mistreatment, especially reports of abuse inside the detainment centre though.

Time will tell.....
 
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buildup said:
What is the purpose of that? What is the purpose of deliberately pissing off peaceful people, and in particular riling the media? Why are most conspiracy theories so non-sensical?
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Yes, don't try to explain with conspiracy what can be attributed more simply to overreaching and incompetence. The police were unable to place some weapons on a table without making themselves looking foolish. Why should we expect they had the capability of managing the overwhelming force they had assembled? That it is perfectly reasonable to believe that any attempt to restrain the small group of vandals on Saturday had potential to make the situation much worse should make us ask who thought spending nearly a billion dollars on security had any utility, except as theatre. It's not that every cop is a bad person, but the police force in Toronto is on an average day a bloated, expensive (largest item on the city's budget) bureaucracy, shaped by its internal politics. Think of the incident at The Lucky Moose, when police were unable to assist a storekeeper even though the store is a short five minute walk from a very large station, then arrested the storekeeper after he was forced to take his own actions. Or how about early this year, when pedestrians were being killed by cars on arterials far from the core of the city, and the police force cracked down on people rushing the crosswalk light at Front and Bay. Reacting towards the wrong targets isn't a new experience for the TPS. It was just larger and much uglier this time.
 
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tkip said:
So I concede that it seems that the police did in fact overreact in some incidences involving people who were passing through the area and not involved with the protests and being questioned and detained. So I'm apologizing for my earlier remarks that anyone in the vicinity and was subjected to police tactics was justified.
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tkip: nice to hear that. so now, do you agree that it was inappropriate for all of the High-Level politicians (Blair, Miller, McGuinty) to "whitewash" the police vs. protester incidents and try as much as they can to prevent a proper "public-favored" inquiry to happen?

(What do I mean by public-favored? I mean an impartial public inquiry, rather than something run by the SIU - I think we can all agree that any SIU-based inquiry will be POLICE-FAVORED, not public-favored)


typezed said:
Yes, don't try to explain with conspiracy what can be attributed more simply to overreaching and incompetence. The police were unable to place some weapons on a table without making themselves looking foolish. Why should we expect they had the capability of managing the overwhelming force they had assembled? That it is perfectly reasonable to believe that any attempt to restrain the small group of vandals on Saturday had potential to make the situation much worse should make us ask who thought spending nearly a billion dollars on security had any utility, except as theatre. It's not that every cop is a bad person, but the police force in Toronto is on an average day a bloated, expensive (largest item on the city's budget) bureaucracy, shaped by its internal politics. Think of the incident at The Lucky Moose, when police were unable to assist a storekeeper even though the store is a short five minute walk from a very large station, then arrested the storekeeper after he was forced to take his own actions. Or how about early this year, when pedestrians were being killed by cars on arterials far from the core of the city, and the police force cracked down on people rushing the crosswalk light at Front and Bay. Reacting towards the wrong targets isn't a new experience for the TPS. It was just larger and much uglier this time.
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Great post. It's unfortunate that I agree with you. The TPS has shown to be just as crass and unprofessional as the vast majority of Canadian Law Enforcement organizations. With that in mind, it's certainly quite easy to believe some of the allegations by the women in the detention centre who said they were felt up by the cops, that they watched them pee, etc.

These are the things that crass, uncouth, thugs in body armor do... no need for a silly NWO, Illuminati or Bilderberger-based conspiracy theory. The banks do not run the world (which is too bad, as a banker I would have loved to benefit from that).

I wonder if the next mayor will make any changes to the TPS as a result of this incident? Haven't all the candidates been conspiciously silent about all this?
 
Admiral Beez said:
That was last month. The city has moved on, the media has moved on, that's why the candidates are silent.
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If the media had moved on, then this might be believable. I'm yet to pick up the newspaper without seeing articles about it.

It was the biggest mass arrest in Canadian history. Two of the previous biggest - the October crisis and the Toronto bathhouse raids stayed in the news for years, both eventually leading to major changes in policing. I see no reason this shouldn't be any different.
 
Redroom Studios said:
don't doubt the Admiral. you shouldnt get stuck in a rut... life goes on, get over it already.
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Excuse me? I would hope that this only a beginning.

I live at Bay and College, I saw the broken windows. That was deplorable, but nothing compared to what was done to our civil liberties. I want the people responsible for those unjustified mass arrests to be held accountable for their actions.
 
Bayer said:
Excuse me? I would hope that this only a beginning.

I live at Bay and College, I saw the broken windows. That was deplorable, but nothing compared to what was done to our civil liberties. I want the people responsible for those unjustified mass arrests to be held accountable for their actions.
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Not going to happen. You know how I avoided getting caught up in those mass arrests on the Sunday? I knew there was a protest going on, knew that a violent minority had trashed the area on Saturday, and decided to stay the hell away.
 
Need a lot more than that for journalists and TTC employees to elicit widespread sympathy from the public in this day and age.
 
It wasn't just Journalists and TTC employees. There were many other innocent people who were captured. Problem with Toronto is the idea "If I wasn't involved in it or it didn't happen to me. Then it's not a big issue. Who cares." They don't seem to realize, it could be them that was captured and treated that way. People wouldn't put themselves in other people's shoes to see how it feels like.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/tor...--i-will-not-forget-what-they-have-done-to-me
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/tor...g20-summit-s-grim-lessons-for-civil-liberties
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/tor.../831652--g20-detainees-get-engaged-at-protest

As for going after the TPC for civilian rights, it may be next to impossible to win. It's citizens (and not every citizen, cuz if it didn't happen to them, they thought all detainees deserved it) against police. The inquiry would be quelled and rejected if it was handled internally. Even if there are surveillance cameras, they wouldn't be used or tampered with. Toronto is a police state. The only way the inquiry would get any help is if inside police stand up and talk. But their job would be at risk. I doubt anyone would do that especially in this economy.

I worry about human rights here. If anything happened, the police either right or wrong would be considered right. And the civilian would always get the short end of the stick and be considered wrong doing.
 
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