A lot of broken windows, spray-painted graffiti, some torched police cars, about 900 arrests, professional anarchists who seem to have had no trouble breaching the tightest security Canada has ever mounted, more than a billion dollars spent on a photo opportunity, and 20 world leaders who neither heard what was going on outside, nor gave a tinker’s damn about it. Just a normal weekend in sleepy Toronto, the largest city in Canada, eh.

 

Actually, it wasn’t.

 

I was born and raised in Toronto, living there until I was 25-years-old. I’m senior enough to have been involved in numerous protests on the streets of Toronto (Vietnam, civil rights, anti-poverty, women’s rights, and many others). But nothing authorities ever did in their attempts to contain legitimate dissent during my youth ever came close to the armed camp that Toronto became over the past week. True, it was only the so-called financial district where the Storm Troopers set up shop. But they were everywhere. Toronto’s mayor tried in vain to get the federal government to hold the event in a more suitable place (of which Toronto has several).

 

A temporary law was passed – in secret, no less – that allowed police to arrest people who came within five meters of the perimeter fencing if they refused to provide identification and a damn good reason for being there. People who work in that district either stayed home – most likely forfeiting pay or using vacation time against their wishes – or tried to get to work using the special security screening badges that they had applied for a couple of weeks ago. I spoke on Thursday with a colleague who works directly across the street from where the summit was taking place; she described it as almost a ghost town, except for the security forces.

 

So I went home on the weekend, and wished I hadn’t.

 

Canada is a generally peaceable country, and the sight of my hometown crawling with police and paramilitary people, all armed to the teeth, was a bit unnerving. Now I know, for many people around the world, this would be everyday life. But this sort of crap isn’t supposed to happen here (except in Montréal during hockey season – if you don’t know, look it up).

 

Friday saw mainly peaceful protest marches, although the marchers were hemmed in on all sides by police, estimated at between 10,000-20,000 strong. But Saturday was a different matter.

 

The protests on Saturday were organized by anti-privatization, labour, and peace movement groups, and it’s estimated around 25,000 showed up to do their part. A small number of protestors began to engage in acts of vandalism, mainly against shops to begin with. It seems likely this small group of vandals was from the Black Bloc, the professional anarchists who usually show up at these events. But the police appeared to do nothing to stop them, not even interfering when three police vehicles were set on fire. Instead, they turned their fury on the peaceful protestors, and a full-scale riot broke out. By the end of the day, nearly 500 protestors had been arrested.

 

Sunday was much more restrained as the official summit ended and the leaders started to go home. But as of today, the arrests total around 900.

 

The last meeting of the G8 (the cream of the G20, at least according to the G8) took place in the United States, where security costs amounted to about $18 million. Canada chalked up $1.2 billion for this little shindig, about 51 times as much as it cost the US to protect the G8. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the addition of the extra 12 people who made the costs soar. It was just usual government spending run amok. But $1.2 billion makes you think this must be an awfully dangerous place if it costs that much to protect these people.

 

So what do the people of Canada get for all those tax dollars spent to host this affair? Bugger all. But smug and smarmy Stephen Harper, our illustrious prime minister, got to have his picture taken with a lot of cool foreigners.

 

And what does the rest of the world get out of it? Well, their leaders got to travel to Toronto and Muskoka, one of the most beautiful parts of this land. Of course, the price they had to pay was having their picture taken with smug and smarmy Stephen Harper.

 

As is the usual case with these events, nothing came out of it. Oh there was a communiqué issued about how they’re all going to try real hard to get their economies in order. But there is no concerted plan for it; they all get to do their own thing. Naturally, they’ll each have to sell this program back home where it will be watered down and eventually shelved, like every other declaration that has ever come out of one of these meetings.

 

So now that this useless exercise is over, let the finger pointing begin. Legitimate protestors, who believe they have something to say to world leaders, will have their messages drowned out in the din of accusations about the violence caused by others. The police will be roundly criticized for overreacting and acting badly. Government at all levels will act as though none of this could possibly be their fault.

 

But what will not get discussed, except by the leftist media, is the real purpose of these stupid summits: furthering the subjugation of the people.

 

World leaders crow about how they want to reform economies in order to produce jobs; but they don’t clarify that they are steadily organizing the world to ensure that labour is provided at the lowest cost possible. They are only interested in jobs insofar as they can eliminate good paying work, and benefit plans, and decent vacations. All those North American jobs that fled out of Canada and the United States over the past 30 years or so didn’t move just for the better weather – they moved to where they could find people willing to work for starvation wages and who could be readily replaced if they didn’t work hard enough or dropped dead in their tracks.

 

People generally don’t care about the things that appear to entertain the leaders. They want jobs, good homes, clean water, enough food, safe streets, good health care that they can access without having to sell off their children and livestock, peace. That doesn’t just mean in North America and Europe – it means everywhere. World leaders don’t care about any of those things. They care about power, they care about feathering their own nests, they care about enriching the elite and keeping you and me as their lickspittles.

 

And these are the world leaders we all keep on electing. Maybe at the next G20 summit, whoever is hosting should not bother about providing security at all. It might be interesting to see how many of these craven bastards would show up.

 

 

 
Read his bio and more articles by
Paul Richard Harris, Editor, Axis of Logic