G20: Do the Players mean the Summit Zone will become the Brutality Zone in Toronto

By Gary Morton, May.28.2010

 Behind the scenes, the key Canadian players in the G20 from the government and protest side know and bitterly despise one another.

 They’ve all been around in what is fast becoming police state downtown Toronto. And as the billion dollar G20 cop brigades wall things off and close things down other times come to mind.

 Many of the leaders and protesters from the Toronto Community Mobilization have spent decades battling some of the same people running the summit.

 Prime Minister Stephen Harper used to stroll around down by what is soon to be the wall zone long years ago when he headed a right wing think and advertising group. Many of the men who are his lieutenants now were about to rise to power as key players in the Mike Harris Ontario Government … which was probably the worst government in Ontario’s history. I remember sitting in the Ontario legislature’s gallery in dismay as the Tories rammed through one crazy bill after another and protesters marched every night and banged drums around the legislature.

 Jim Flaherty, now Prime Minister Harper’s finance minister and the biggest player in the summit, was around then in the Harris government. One time he went over to Cabbagetown near the current summit area to support some vigilantes that generally wanted to end panhandling, close shelters and kick the poor out of the neighbourhood. It was a short drive for Flaherty as he got run out by protesters with his car being rocked as he barely escaped. He had a look of anger and dismay on his face as he fled.

 The protesters were John Clark and the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty … a group that is now melded into the Toronto Community Mobilization against the G8/G20. And it’s the same with nearly everyone else and every other protest group as they all have memories of confronting people like Flaherty and Tony Clement and a number of others now in Prime Minister Harper’s minority government. There are indeed 10,000 stories in the naked city about how people with social justice in mind fought what are now the Harper Tories. Let us not give up the fight, and you know what else: no one in Toronto votes for them and they know it and hate Toronto, seeing it as a liberal left city they wish they could sort of get rid of.

And guess what. Now everyone is back, and it’ll be a bit harder to run Flaherty out of the neighborhood, seeing that he’s coming with the biggest gang of cops the world has ever seen and building walls and unleashing sound cannons and who know what else. Yes, the same Jim Flaherty that didn’t want a panhandler to get a quarter does not have a problem with spending a fortune in a giveaway to cops and the rich. The Harper Government has pretty much written a blank check. Whatever the crook that runs Italy wants, give it to him … whatever those Chinese fellows want, deliver it … spend, spend, spend on the rich.

 There is a lot of animosity behind the scenes as the Canadian Protesters and the Harper Gang share mutual hatred of one another. And perhaps that’s also behind the huge billion dollars plus sum being spent on security. And don’t forget, that’s only security and a lot more is being spent and there is no audit of that spending. Harper, Flaherty and others in Harper's government are activists as well, but right wing ones ... with Flaherty's activism being to cry out against a bank tax ... yes, he's the champion of Banksters not Canadians and along with the rest an enemy of social justice in nearly all of its forms.

 You know what: if things get out of control, and the cop army goes wild busting heads, and chaos and smoke rise in Toronto. There might be people like Prime Minister Harper, Finance Minister Flaherty and Industry Minister Tony Clement in a back room full of cop commandos grinning from ear to ear. The taste of revenge can be sweet, and after enjoying the brutal acts of a cop army, politicians can always put on a severe face and hit the cameras to condemn those protesters that brought violence to the peaceful police zone in Toronto.

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