Last night at 7 p.m., on CBC's Fifth Estate, the topic was police behaviour at the G20 Summit in Toronto (June 26-27, 2010). It was staggering to see how peaceful protesters were dragged, beaten, cuffed, pepper sprayed, fired on with rubber bullets, arrested, herded into cages. One older man had his prosthetic leg confiscated, his spectacles removed, and others were caged. One young university student described being stripsearched and said she had her bra confiscated because it had metal in it! Protestors, asking what the charge was, were ignored or given conflicting reasons for their detainment. Persistence was quickly dealt with by arresting the questioners. This was the biggest mass arrest in Canada's history. Unbelievable. Of the 1100 arrested, over 700 were never charged.
After recently watching so much visual input in the purportedly undemocratic nations of the Middle East, it was hard to discern any difference between the treatment meted out to those protesters and the ones at the G20 summit.
At 7:10 p.m., precisely, the Fifth Estate was interrupted, without explanation, to a LIVE broadcast of Prime Minister Stephen Harper telling viewers, in both official languages, that 230 Canadians had been rescued from Libya! When he was finished, at 7:20, he turned quickly and departed swiftly to avoid questions. Interestingly, this was his second address to the nation in three days. This from a man best known for his avoidance of the electorate and the press corps is worthy of note.
One has to wonder whether Mr. Harper had viewed the CBC programme earlier and, understandably, found any pointless way he could to interrupt it soon after it started - hoping perhaps, that viewers, seeing him, might switch to some other channel and forget to return to the Fifth Estate after he had finished. Politically, for him, the film was a nightmare. Giving the police powers of martial law, unfettered - as seen in Toronto - is a very dangerous and slippery slope.
If he had any real opposition, Stephen Harper would have been out long ago. Should you wish to take the time, go to You Should Have Stayed at Home (cbc.ca/fifth) and see for yourself. Wasting our taxpayers' money to build new prisons as crime diminishes is also an enigma. If we all "stay home" and refrain from peaceful dissent in the future, the Conservatives won't need them.
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I very much appreciate this blog and this piece in particular.
ReplyDeleteGiven that there are a lot of very creepy people on Planet Earth, many of whom are downright evil, we’re lucky to be here in the snow and ice. But we may still need to remind ourselves that this country actually belongs to us, not exclusively to the federal or provincial governments and certainly not to the police.
As many of us have bitterly experienced, a lot of our politicians and police are not very bright and possess powers far beyond their intellectual capacities. Not unexpectedly they stick us with situations we don’t like. But what can we do? We elect the politicians and give them free rein with our money; and we allow the police to bully us with no fear of being held to account.
Of course the politicians will side with the police. They’re both on to a really good thing.
I suspect that they really don’t give a damn what citizens think. We’ve seen official ugliness like this before (Remember the moron Sergeant Pepper and more recently the police who killed Robert Dziekanski and lied about it?). It’s the same in Europe and worse in many other places, and may sadly be one of the prices we pay for not yet being like Libya or Burma.
Stay home or go out: it’ll make little difference.
Don't be so pucking gloomy. We went to Montebello when Bush was visiting Harper. The police were there in full riot gear. Scary stuff. The a "protester" was identified as a copper (had police boots on) who was throwing rocks at his mates to incite riot! It was fully exposed and confessed to by the local rozzers. Anything come of it? Sod all, as you suggest. But silence is consent and I hope we don't all go mute. Don
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