G20: A Corporatist Show of Force and Power in Toronto

Toronto Star photo

A great corporatist hoax was perpetrated in Toronto during the G20 this past weekend, and both the Canadian public and most of the mainstream media bought it hook, line and sinker. To anyone who has ever participated in an anti-globalization protest, this will not be a surprise.

There were over 10,000 police in the downtown streets, in many places every 10m on empty streets and en masse in other places. Yet if you look at the photos of the so-called “anarchist vandals” who smashed windows of American Apparel and other big US-owned chains on Saturday, you won’t find anyone being arrested or challenged — in fact you won’t see any police in any of the pictures of vandals at all (but lots of cameras, of course). Similarly, the police cars set afire were seemingly driven in advance by police into the centre of the publicized demonstration area, and then left, empty, unlocked and unwatched. Shortly thereafter, the empty cars were attacked and torched by the vandals with no obstruction from the police, who are nowhere to be seen in any of the much-publicized photos (see for yourself below).

Then, beginning shortly after the totally-ignored vandalism occurred, large masses of heavily armed police charged peaceful, stationary protesters, beating and arresting dozens apparently at random, and charging the crowd, firing tear gas and rubber bullets at groups just milling around, seated talking or singing together. The unprovoked violence of the cops then continued for the last 36 hours of the G20 meeting, as gangs of heavily-armed police shoulder to shoulder threatened, arrested, bullied and charged at people going about their business in neighbourhoods throughout Toronto, seemingly with no purpose except to instill anger and fear of the police, and incite retaliatory violence.

Here is a collection of photos and videos that pretty well speak for themselves:

• Toronto Star photos of “anarchists” vandalizing windows and police cars Saturday, totally undisturbed by the police. Follow-up Toronto Star photos of police-protester confrontations and G20 leader preening on Sunday, the last day of the G20.
• Video by right-wing mainstream broadcaster Global TV showing trigger-happy police firing at a crowd of unarmed protesters point-blank.
• Citizen journalist video of police arbitrarily charging into and arresting protesters sitting peacefully in a park.
• Citizen journalist video of police charging people singing Canada’s national anthem.
• Citizen journalist video of police harassing and charging people in their home neighbourhood of Queen Street West, Sunday night after the G20 was over, and miles from the G20 meetings.
• Citizen journalist video of police charging and arresting people in the designated Free Speech Zone who keep asking over and over “we’re just standing here man, what are we doing wrong?”
• Citizen journalist video of police charging and arresting people at random at the end of a peaceful march.
• National Post (right-wing Toronto mainstream media newspaper) photographers tell of their personal ordeal when they were arrested and imprisoned for photographing the police violence:

“We weren’t just handcuffed. They also put cuffs on our legs, around the ankles. Once we got to Eastern Avenue (the site of the temporary detention centre) we were put into makeshift cages. They were about six metres by four metres in size. For a while, they kept moving us from cage to cage, as we were being processed and the charges were explained to everyone. We were strip searched. It is all kind of blurry. Once we got to speak on the phone to a lawyer, we had some idea of what was happening and knew that we might get out on bail the next day. We did not get any water for 12 hours.We could not wear our shoes in the cell. It was so cold. It felt like it was five degrees and we were in our t-shirts. There were no blankets. There was just a narrow steel bench and a port-a-potty with an open door.”

• National Post reports on the mass illegal arrests of protesters.
• More citizen journalist videos and photos.

Toronto Star photo

The big surprise of the event is that the police gangs beat up, arrested and caged in a makeshift prison many journalists and professional photographers including representatives of the corporatist mainstream media, who had been set up to film and report on the “anarchists”. Bad idea: The publisher of the mainstream Toronto Star called the show of force “a brutal spectacle that failed the city“. An interviewer for TVOntario was appalled by what he saw first hand, and tweeted his outrage for hours. A reporter for the right-wing corporatist Globe & Mail wrote Police G20 Tactics Give Toronto a Black Eye saying:

Come to Toronto, for work or pleasure, and enjoy having your civil liberties trampled and your right to free expression stifled. Avail yourself of our hospitality in a crowded detention pen, with free stale buns and water when (or if) your hosts get around to it. Partake of an invigorating massage, courtesy of police officers wielding truncheons. The best part – there’s no charge! Except that seems to mean the cops will pick you up, hold you, then let you go without ever following through criminal charges or prosecution, suggesting they had nothing on you in the first place.

The mainstream media as a whole seem a bit bewildered by all of this, but none of them has yet said what the indymedia knew all along: the masked “black bloq anarchist” vandalism was a carefully-staged photo-op for the gullible media, to justify the $1.3B security price tag for holding the ludicrous primp-and-preen G20 “leaders” circus right in the midst of Canada’s biggest city (essentially shutting down the whole city for a week, with a cost to workers and businesses of billions more), and to discourage and discredit legitimate anti-globalization protest.

As in previous large-scale protests, there is substantial evidence that many of the 10,000+ police “hired” for G20 security worked undercover, in plainclothes, and as infiltrators/instigators of the “anarchists” and perpetrators of the vandalism. Since the vandals are all conveniently masked and unidentified (no police around to unmask them), we will never know.

Will the mainstream media figure it out? Stay tuned, but don’t hold your breath. And don’t hold your breath, either, for the dumbed-down Canadian majority to realize they’ve been had. The whole world was watching, but precious few realized what they were really seeing.