Thursday 8 July 2010

'This ain't Canada right now.' It's Upsidedownland

Strange days, indeed. The Sun is making sense again.

Referring to the video you can see here, Joe Warmington writes:
“This ain’t Canada right now.” — a police officer during a G20 arrest.

For a few hours during G20 weekend it sure didn’t look like Canada.

But since it is Canada one thing I would like clarified is no matter how annoying a mouthy activist can get, what authority do police have to decide his liberties are no longer valid?

(Man, the cops fucked up BIG TIME by detaining and/or roughing up journalists.)

Joe's got more good questions.
An incident during the protests on University Ave. — captured on video — would be a good one to study.

In it an officer says “this ain’t Canada right now” while another one says “this is G20 land.” And when a man, who was put in a physical hold by police for no reason clear on the video, said “I don’t like to have my civil rights violated” an officer can be heard saying “there’s no civil rights here in this area.”

Where did these officers get this idea? On their own or from above?

And how far above?

This is verrrrry interesting:
So many sources are telling me the RCMP were largely at the helm which, if true, means a federal investigation or inquiry is what is needed — something with the power to subpoena and interview the brass of all of the police services involved, deal with all of the public complaints and hear the individual front-line officers’ point of view, as well.

The whole schmozzle did have the feel of a good old Mountie barn-burning, didn't it?

By the way, membership in the Facebook group Canadians Demanding a Public Inquiry into Toronto G20 just hit 50,000. So what are you waiting for?

1 comment:

Fillibluster said...

The fact that the RCMP were in charge should not be a big revelation. It was covered pre-summit in this piece.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/g8-g20/news/rcmp-unveil-secret-summit-command-centre/article1622380/

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