I spent the day watching the Olympics. It's a great time for Canada.
We won our first medal today. Silver. Don't be sad Jenn, you did your best and that's all we could hope for. Too bad no one thought to gave her a Canada flag.
Protesters are idiots. They marred the day with their criminal actions. I hope someone see's these people and turns them in.
Canadian Sense has the pictures, do you know any of these guys? If so, call the police and get them off of our streets. They are giving Canada a black eye. Maybe the actual protesters can man up and use their signs to smack a few anarchist heads.
All in all, it was a great day for Canada, we have a medal on the first day and many more to come. Go Canada Go!
5 comments:
I was jumping up and down when she took the lead with one competitor left, but I cursed and tossed my remote control when the American landed a higher score.
On the issue of the protests, I have addressed this fallacy on my blog; but I will say that the anti poverty, anti bottled water, anti oil sand, anti globazation clowns have to be jealous that the Anarchists are stealing all the media attention. They may all be clowns, but many among them have to realize that smashing windows paints a negative picture of all protestors. The less destructive anti globalization protestors should rat out the vandals.
Well we already have the Quebec Bloc, and now we appear to be beset with the presence of the anarchist Black Bloc, a German anarchist offshoot of the remnants of the Baader Meinhof gang. Judging from the photos, I wouldn't be surprised if European Black Bloc types, the same who assaulted the police and set fires throughout Strasbourg at the 2009 Nato summit, burned a hotel to the ground, decided to pay a visit to Vancouver.
It would appear the Squamish Five is being reconstituted on our own soil.
Do a google search on "black bloc". Wikipedia, for what it's worth and I'm aware it has many critics, advises:
"A black bloc is a tactic for protests and marches, whereby individuals wear black clothing, ski masks and motorcycle helmets with padding, steel-toed boots and often carrying their own shields and truncheons.[1] The clothing is used to avoid being identified, and to theoretically, appear as one large mass, promoting solidarity, and creating a clear revolutionary presence.
The tactic was developed in the 1980s by anti-nuclear activist autonomists.[1] Black blocs gained broader media attention outside Europe during the 1999 anti-WTO demonstrations, when a black bloc damaged property of GAP, Starbucks, Old Navy, and other retail locations in downtown Seattle. "
From an anarchist discussion piece on the Black Bloc entitled " Bashing the Black Bloc?"
"The four main summits of the last four years - Seattle, Prague, Quebec, and Genoa - have all been different, and the Black Bloc has been different at each one. The Seattle protest, though it involved far fewer people than some of the later protests, was probably the most effective. Because it was the first protest of its kind the police and the summit organizers weren't prepared, and protestors were able to block access to the summit for most of the day, causing major disruption. The Black Bloc played a relatively small part in the blockade, but received a major part of the news coverage. The two types of action - blockades and property destruction - pointed to a new kind of protest, protest that was visible, illegal, and more concerned with getting results than with making a symbolic point."
"In Quebec, the level of security increased again, and again the situation changed. The erection of the perimeter fence, and the raids on squats in the days before the summit, raised the stakes even higher. Like in Prague, the protestors responded by dividing the protest area into zones, so people could choose the level of illegality and confrontation with which they were comfortable. Here, as in Seattle, there was a separate Black Bloc, though unlike in Seattle this Black Bloc concentrated on attacking the summit, confronting police and trying to get through the perimeter fence."
"Being in the Black Bloc just means being willing to break the law, destroy property, or fight with the police to achieve the aims of the protest. As such, many non-anarchists will happily join the block, to the extent that one of the Black Blocs in Genoa contained a group of Maoists."
"The Black Bloc's willingness to destroy property may be what sets them apart from other protestors, but there is also some division within the block about what this should mean. On the one hand, there are those willing to use 'violence' for a particular purpose, to take down a fence or barricade, or get past police lines, as part of disrupting a summit. At the other extreme are those who think that opposing global capitalism means opposing all of its manifestations, and attacking shops, cars, and the police whenever possible."
And from an anarchist retrospective on the Black Bloc actions at the G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, entitled " With The Black Block in Genoa"
"With our varying points of view we represented a microcosm of the movement as a whole, and I'm pleased to say the anarchist presence meant that it was harder to write us off as violent nutcases or as anti-organisation dreamers."... "The ethos of the Black Bloc is best summed up by the saying from Gothenburg "Police Attack We Fight Back". Contrary to what you may have heard it was not exclusively anarchist or even libertarian (although that was by far the dominant tendency) and it was from everywhere in Europe and Northern America."
" Firstly the Black Bloc did a lot of property damage, some of it sensible: banks, porn shops, petrol stations, expensive cars, supermarkets; some of it stupid: traffic lights, bus shelters, cheaper cars; and some of it lunatic: starting a fire in a office above which was a apartment bloc. A prison was also attacked. "
I think we could unite around non-violent direct action, but where was the non-violent direct action, blockading the streets so delegates cannot enter a summit is direct action but marching is not, marching, protesting, is saying 'Please Mr.Capitalism Abolish Yourself' ....In many ways the violence non-violence issue boils down to this: how much violence do you expect from the state and do you think that the system can be reformed."
The problem is, anarchists are fighting to replace our system with one that would use violence, intimidation ,incarceration and state sponsored murder as a means to control thoughts and actions.
They are fooling nobody when they give excuses as to why they do what they do.
They are violent reactionaries intent on helping usher in a new order based on Communism.
Do what the German police did..as soon as these people were forming up, they smashed the living hell out of all of them.These people are dedicated to violence.I say give it right back to them.
I think Kursk is idealizing Germany somewhat in his belief the Black Bloc has been smashed. The place is infested with them, you can get "demonstrations", more like street riots, with several thousand of these masked marauders wreaking havoc. In some cities you have permanent squatter zones.
They are more akin to terrorists, or the crazed Maoists of my youth, with their propensity for minority violence, than to old school Marxists. Communists believe in mass violence, revolutionary overthrow once protests have reached a certain peak, as opposed to minority violence. They may engage in electoral action as well, not simply window smashing and mindless arson.
On a broader philosophical scale, these anarchists don't believe in state sponsored Stalinist style violence, not because they're non-violent, but because they reject the "state", even a "revolutionary worker's state".
I'm not sure what vision of a land of milk and honey they have bouncing around in their brains, but when I hear "anarchism", I think of the end of civilization, some Mad Max apocalytic world with crazed thugs like Humungous leading a crazed horde terrorizing the other survivors with impunity, raping and pillaging. Such is the absence of the "state".
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