G-20 Anatomy

Saturday's Toronto Star had an "Anatomy of the G20" that described the confluence of circumstances that led to the police overreacting to the Black Block rioters and curtailing the civil, political, and legal rights of hundreds of innocent people.

I found the whole thing a stupid waste of time. Look. They spent over one-fucking-billion-dollars to prevent some protesters from breaking some fucking windows, okay? Then, after they spent the fucking one-billion dollars, the Black Bloc was able to break the goddamned windows anyway. Then, the police, the enforcers of the state's monopoly on violence, went apeshit and trampled our precious Charter Rights, just like they did at the WTO meeting in Montreal and at Quebec City and at the APEC Conference in Vancouver, and as they wanted to do at Montebello in Quebec for the "Security Prosperity Partnership" bullshit. The way they trample human rights every fucking time imperialist, asshole leaders get together. And anyone too goddamned stupid to recognize this doesn't really have anything of value to say on the topic.

The "Black Bloc" supposedly provokes the police into a violent overreaction to its vandalism to expose the tenuous nature of our rights under liberal capitalism. The police were more than happy to take the bait and demonstrate their ability to abuse us with impunity. In the eyes of the public and most of the protesters, the police won. Your average couch-potato doofus cheers on the destruction of his or her own civil rights and your average protester thinks three or four times before going out to make a political statement. And the system continues its bloody way.