Each year, Montreal's misfits and anarchists under the guise of a protest against police brutality, end up rioting and destroying public and private property in a Bacchanalian celebration of mindless destruction."At the height of the event in Montreal, gases and projectiles mixed with the over 300 people gathered to commemorate the 14th anniversary of the International Day Against Police Brutality.Members of the black block, an infamous anarchist organization, stood at the centre of the event, with gas masks and sticks. They threw rocks and anything else they found on the ground" Anti-cop rally turns violent in Montreal
Each year, Montrealers shake their collective heads in disbelief at the shear stupidity and ask themselves once again, what can be done.
There's little doubt that much of what happens in the streets is a result of lax and incompetent police work and a general inability of the police to control unruly crowds. Hence Montreal remains the riot capital of North America.
On this occasion, the police got it right. Just as the marchers turned violent, the police reacted quickly to corral the marchers and arrest them on the flimsiest of excuse.
Before much damage occurred, the march was neutralized and the participants handed $500 tickets for blocking traffic. Haha!! Well-played....
Of course the anarchists cried foul and said that the police weren't playing by the rules. According to them, if the police are going to arrest people, the arrestees should have the benefit of causing some serious damage first!
More hilarity!
All this highlights the fact that Montreal is home to Canada's weirdest collection of counter-culture misfits, who while rejecting our society are the first to enjoy the benefits of the labour of those charged with working and paying taxes.
There are those who will take umbrage at my characterization of these people as misfits, so let me add more fuel to the fire by calling them morons as well.
Montreal's Communist Party remains actively engaged promoting a failed political system with a Trotsky-like vigour. As it's most famous apologist, Amir Khadir complained bitterly to the media that there's nothing wrong with being a communist and that using the communist as a pejorative is unfair.
And so the communists have in many respects battened down the hatches and sought refuge in the Bloc solidaire political party which provides cover for the much maligned reds.
Of course there are other nuttier organizations of those dedicated to unpopular and failed causes like PAJU, a rag tag collection of self-loathing, atheist Jews, who are used by Palestinian brethren to propagate the most egregious lies about Israel.
No matter that their boycott against a Montreal shoe store has backfired miserably, finally getting their fifteen minutes of fame is much more important than success.
And then there is the insufferable Israel Apartheid Week held mostly in Concordia University where the large Arab student body is bolstered in their naked celebration of hate towards Jews and Israel by a coterie of willing middle class, white student stooges.
I guess its to be expected, my generation of collegians went around with Chairman Mao's wonderful Little Red Book of communists thoughts much to the chagrin of our parents who also paid the bills to put us through school.
This year's Israel -bashing event is even more bankrupt than in the past with not one of the Israel bashers willing to denounce the murder of Arab citizens by one Arab government after the other.
Of course none of them will face the unpleasant truth that Israel's latest boarding of a ship, yielded fifty tons of weapons destined to Gaza, nor will they face the unpleasant fact that Arabs handed out sweets, celebrating the murder of an Israeli family by a Palestinian who slit the throats of two adults and three little children while sleeping. Not doubt the violence is the fault of the Jews.
Perhaps Concordia can pass out Tim Horton's doughnuts in a sympathetic celebration as well!
And so Montreal remains a hotbed of counter culture protest, but alas nobody really cares, particularly the francophone community which is widely under-represented among these crackpot groups.
Yup, the Black Block, other anarchists, PAJU, the Communist Party of Quebec and supporters of BDS and assorted Israel-bashing are over-represented by Anglophones and Ethnics.
It's curious, but true.
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In honour of the Quebec finance minister's Thursday's budget, here's a cartoon from last year that aptly depicts how the government will 'reduce' expenses.Have a good weekend!
For more funny political cartoons, vist YGRECK's website.
I’m not sure, Editor.
ReplyDeleteI agree that responding to police brutality with protester violence and other brutality doesn’t do much to rally support for the cause.
And I have numerous times shaken my head at the BS that our ‘counterculture misfits’ as you call them have occasionally (and often successfully) passed off as legitimate.
But I have to respectfully and at times vehemently disagree with some of the assertions that you make, which I hear from various detractors at various times.
> Before much damage occurred, the march was neutralized and the participants handed $500 tickets for blocking traffic. Haha!! Well-played […] Of course the anarchists cried foul and said that the police weren't playing by the rules. According to them, if the police are going to arrest people, the arrestees should have the benefit of causing some serious damage first!
Protests like this have their fair share of troublemakers, and it’s unfortunate but almost expected that you’ll have at least a few rotten apples at a gathering like this, who should rightly be arrested/ticketed. While the organizers could have helped their cause by providing Montreal Police with a more detailed itinerary/route of the event, it also isn’t very helpful to proceed to arbitrarily and preemptively arrest people “just in case” they “might think” of “doing something bad” [http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Anti+brutality+rally+Police+protesters+under+attack/4453210/story.html].
I realize that there’s a fine line between protesting for protesting’s sake (largely ineffective) and causing damage and harm to other law abiding citizens, but I almost come away from your post with the sense that you are more sympathetic to hawkish security force clampdowns than you are toward the legitimate airing of grievances against the excesses of these front line defenders of law and order.
A more moderate view is called for. The security of citizens is paramount if we are to have a functional state that is governed by competent people who remember (and reminded daily) who they’re working for.
But a good number of “leaders” that in any democratic state are *elected* and/or *appointed* to *temporarily* *serve* the entire citizenry become infected with notions of narcissistic invincibility and infallibility. The best we can do is take them down and replace them with a different monkey in a different suit. Similarly, the security forces whose service toward *all citizens* is critical do just as well to be perpetually vigilant, but in the end should be subjected to the same humbling self-examination exercises by the public, but sadly aren’t.
Pomposity and self-righteous disingenuousness, if not outright arrogant spite, whether on the part of elected officials and law enforcement personnel, threaten our societal harmony just as much as do the miscreants who deliberately provoke “brutality” by setting fire to private property, for example. One group is maligned but keeps its white collar on (unless they did something “really” “bad”), the other gets cuffed and carted away in a paddy wagon. A slight generalization perhaps, but this cuts a lot deeper than the sensational pictures our supposedly free, fair, and professional press splashes on TV.
Many of us, without necessarily being flower children (or their ideological descendants), watch the fallout from the G20 debacle, for example and increasingly support the idea that the rights and liberties afforded to us under both our provincial charters of human rights and freedoms and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms need to be enforced not by a polite or cutesy poodle, but by a butch and aggressive Doberman. Fact is, that’s just not happening right now.
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> Montreal's Communist Party remains actively engaged promoting a failed political system with a Trotsky-like vigour. As it's most famous apologist, Amir Khadir complained bitterly to the media that there's nothing wrong with being a communist and that using the communist as a pejorative is unfair.
ReplyDeleteI’m neither a fan of Amir Khadir, nor of his politics, nor of his party. But let’s call a spade a spade and admit that there’s a lot of work to be done within our own system. America keeps extolling the virtues of democracy and presses (and I use that term sardonically) various countries around the world to sometimes comedic (again sardonic) effect. Haha!! Well played….? I’m not so sure.
> And so the communists have in many respects battened down the hatches and sought refuge in the Bloc solidaire political party which provides cover for the much maligned reds.
Quebec Solidaire, you mean. Fine, but how’s that any different from the former “states rights” supporters in the American South who switched from the Democratic Party to the Republicans during the Civil Rights era? Or how many Montreal suburbanites supported Tremblay in 2001 as an anybody-but-Bourque candidate? Groups regroup into umbrella groups all the time. Mix and match till you find something that works.
> Of course there are other nuttier organizations of those dedicated to unpopular and failed causes like PAJU, a rag tag collection of self-loathing, atheist Jews, who are used by Palestinian brethren to propagate the most egregious lies about Israel.
I get that they aren’t your favorite group. And even though my sympathies lie much more on the other side of the fence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I’m not a fan of rah-rah protest wonks either.
> This year's Israel -bashing event is even more bankrupt than in the past with not one of the Israel bashers willing to denounce the murder of Arab citizens by one Arab government after the other.
I never understood the twisted logic whereby the murder of one Israeli needed to be avenged with the slaughter of an arbitrary multiplier of Arabs (empirically somewhere between 5 and 10) in some kind of sick “price tag” retribution [http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/the-price-of-the-price-tag-1.2185]. This is a troubling Israeli development that our bought and paid for mainstream media never talk about.
I’ve always found equally (and infuriatingly) hypocritical the criticism of Israel as legitimate redirection for Arab anger toward Arab brutality. I understand the self-serving use that many Arab governments have traditionally made of this “valve”, but I find it does little to advance the cause of human rights, justice, and freedom for all people in the Middle East for those of us outside that region not to scream bloody murder whenever there was… (wait for it…) bloody murder.
> Of course none of them will face […] unpleasant fact that Arabs handed out sweets, celebrating the murder of an Israeli family by a Palestinian who slit the throats of two adults and three little children while sleeping. Not doubt the violence is the fault of the Jews.
Certainly not something to rejoice about. But an excellent opportunity to denounce Israeli “settlement” activity as the fraudulent and viperous false-god of “Israeli security strategy” touted by hawks everywhere. The purpose of those settlements isn’t to live in harmony with the native inhabitants of the territory, and everybody knows it. And it’s wrong. And it’s not like there’s no historical precedent for this: when White people “settled” in Indian territory and got scalped, everybody knew why the Indians were mad.
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> And so Montreal remains a hotbed of counter culture protest, but alas nobody really cares, particularly the francophone community which is widely under-represented among these crackpot groups.
ReplyDeleteSurely you jest. If we don’t need crackpot groups, it’s because some ideas can totally go mainstream.
Did you watch the open mike hilarity coming out of some white francophone catholic hicks during the reasonable accommodation shtick? The radical nationalist right has been in bed with socialists since even before the Quiet Revolution. In the last 50 years alone this “axis” has spawned countless numbers of protest groups, pressure groups, terrorist groups, and hate groups (often masquerading as legitimate “concerned citizens’ ‘rassemblements’”). Before that, the Church enjoyed a near monopoly on legitimately expressible thought – including its most egregious abuses.
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Everyone has brutality, on line with words, or on the streets. Chacun pour soi.
ReplyDelete