Tuesday 29 June 2010

Remind You of Anything?

Originally published 6/29/10, 2:24 pm.
The Saturday of the G20 summit in Toronto was marked by extensive violence by protesters that included, for example, the torching of police cars and much vandalism. The response of the police, was, as such, to be much more vigilant on Sunday to ensure that the violence that occurred the day before would not be repeated.

As can be expected, though, in response to this stronger police action some people voiced criticisms notwithstanding that this tougher police enforcement was successful in stopping the violence. As Toronto's 680News further reported "[Toronto] Police Chief Bill Blair [further] defend[ed] the actions of the Toronto police during the G20 and displayed the cache of weapons seized from protesters over the weekend. Some of the weapons seized by police were arrows, baseball bats, crowbars, bamboo poles, aluminium poles, metal pipes and incendiary devices."
See http://www.680news.com/news/local/article/71937--chief-bill-blair-defends-police-g20-actions-displays-weapons-seized

So lets get this straight. Protesters who are expected to act peacefully do not. In fact, they actually brought weapons with them in order to cause violence. The authorities who, at first, believe that they will be peaceful, give them some leeway. In response, the protesters do become violent and the authorities are left with no other alternative but to respond in a strong manner. To show that these protesters always intended to cause violence, the authorities show the media the weapons that they captured from these supposedly peaceful protesters.

Guess what? There has also been a call for an independent investigation of what happened -- and the police have dismissed it for obvious reasons.

Does this sound similar to any other current events that you might be aware of that have occurred in the past few months?

Rabbi Ben Hecht

1 comment:

Garnel Ironheart said...

Oh, I thought: did the rioting in Toronto remind me of the Chareidi rioting in Israel?