G20 Summit in Toronto – Basically Peaceful
G20 recent news reports.
For the last two days there have been burgundy colored van loads of police in bullet jackets, all dressed in black with baseball caps on their heads, hovering around. Policemen standing around with their white bicycles waiting for action. Oh, it’s so boring in Toronto. I must live in the most boring city in the world.
There’s been one colorful protest, with people dressed up in colorful clothes, representing the gays and lesbians of the city. There was another protest, again, peaceful, with people slicked with oil to protest the BP oil spill. I’m sure they all arrived in cars. The Native Canadians had their protest too. When you count the numbers, there are “hundreds” of protesters, not thousands and not tens of thousands. All rather peaceful as Canadians will be, due to their passivity. Most of us at work were hoping for some violent action today or tonight so we would receive a “snow day” – a day off from work. Hopefully, the rich foreign anarchists will show up soon. We’re waiting. Where are they?
No point demonstrating on the weekend – we won’t get a snow day. We’re doing laundry, groceries, house work and other such boring errands, too busy to take notice before Monday rolls around again.
Canada’s G20 Summit has been very peaceful, I must say. But we’re not really politicized and there’s nothing much to protest about lately, except the HST tax that’s about to be imposed on us come July, making us one of the most highly taxed nations in the world.
The police presence in Toronto as well as the security measures, no doubt, have made everyone afraid to protest. One wouldn’t dare “Act Up.” Other countries such as China, Thailand, France, Greece and Turkey experience violent protest – perhaps these countries don’t have the organization of the police and the strength of our security forces that Canada does? We’re tops. Hey!
My favorite quote of the week was from the spokesman of the Southern Ontario Anarchists Association (oxymoron) that “the anarchists are very organized this year”. Since when do anarchists form associations and since when do they get themselves organized? That’s what the establishment does.
I walked around Dundas and Yonge Street on my breaks and at lunchtime. Dundas Square was as empty and dead as a Sunday morning – all day. There was hardly anyone in the streets. Nothing. Even the freely roaming mental patients and the homeless were strangely absent. Perhaps all G20 Summits should now be held in Toronto. Toronto the Good, one of the best places in the world to hold a summit. Business can get done amid such tight security measures. It’s not like Europe where protesters can jump on a train, a bus, a cheap flight – on road trip – and go protest in their neighbours’ lands.
Or maybe, people are just too lazy or bored to protest. The iPhone release would make for a good conspiracy theory:
“Apple teams up with G20 to shut down protests”
“Droves of would-be protesters dressed in black and tired of searching for valet parking for their Beamers streamed out of downtown TO today to Apple stores located in the city’s suburbs, leaving G20 protest organizers stranded at empty intersections babbling incoherently with large groups of bored police officers, also dressed in black.”
Local office workers, frustrated at losing a potential two days off due to expected violent protests, poured out of their towers at 11:00 a.m. Pushing through the police cordon in their high heels and Oxfords, they swarmed the G20 protest organizers, pelting them with empty mineral water bottles and Starbucks cups.
One organizer, in shock after a secretary stepped on his toe, complained about the counter protest, “I vas here to speak out for zee poor vorkers, I even flew beeznees Klaas from Berlin to ensure I vas here. I bought an Italienishe gazmask and can’t use it. And zese bourgeois mittel Klaas lackies of zee corporations haff ruined everysing. I’m going back to zee Royal Yok until zey go away. Zat’s vere I stay, you know.”
Dejected, he stumbled off, only to by hit in the back by a leather briefcase hurled by a well-dressed young man. Police stood by, tapping their batons in regimented unison to the latest iPhone ad playing on the overhead billboard. Many police officers were seen chatting with office workers about after-work drinks. A number already had dates by 11:30 p.m.
Counter protests are expected today but it is not known whether G20 protest organizers will dare enter the downtown area, and many were already hastily re-booking flights out of Toronto.
Related Posts
There’s small problem with your conspiracy theory. Apple still does not have a release date for the iPhone 4G in Canada. Like pretty well everything else, we poor cousins get to watch our rich neighbours next door while they party on with new this, new that. When they’re ready, we can come in through the back door and try the food and the drink. Thank you Rogers, Bell, Telus for your inability to negotiate what your customers want, and oh, by the way, thanks for the highest fees in the western world.
what you are saying is so totally true. A friend of mine so badly wanted the iPad as soon as it was released, she had to rent a car and drive to Buffalo to pick up her new baby. Was she the first in Canada to own an iPad? Perhaps. She paid less for it than she would have had to pay in Canada. Yeah, I totally agree, Rogers, Bell and Telus should be charged with charging us the highest fees in the world.
And, about that user fee. If grocery stores started charging us a “user fee” for entering their grocery stores just to be customers, would we still shop there. Thank god there are new mobile cell phone companies emerging that will create competition to Rogers, Bell & Telus who are already gouging the consumers…