It bothers me that there are trolls on the Internet who make it their mission to diminish the role that protesters play in our democratic system. I know I’m not supposed to feed the trolls, or be bothered by them, but it’s not possible to love your country’s freedoms and stand by while anti-democratic protesters spew their nonsense all over the WWW, unchallenged.
Police forces and cities across democratic countries are bulking up on “security” equipment like sound weapons, CCTV, and Tasers. This is why the price tag of “security” at farcical intergovernmental meetings is so astronomical that it boondoggle-boggles the mind. This is the sort of thing that the American 2nd Amendment was created to defend against! Unfortunately, the sort of people in Canada who normally defend against this sort of thing (the “gun nuts”) have forgotten to keep their guns, but kept the nuts.
Check out these fascist gems by Mary:
“I just hope a lot of protesters get arrested and jailed for a long time. They have no hope in hades to change anything on the agenda. All they do is allow us to see what fools they are, little terrorists in training. Anyone in a face mask, automatic arrest.”
“If there isn’t a guilt by association, there should be, or maybe [protesters] could be charged as accomplices [in riot damage].”
“As for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it is only for trouble makers.”
Protesters in the streets are essential in a democracy. If there is civil unrest, the media needs to see it, otherwise it’s assumed all is well. The more than $1,100,000,000.00 the Conservatives are spending of our tax money to HIDE and suppress protest at the G20 meetings, is an attack on democracy in this country. Its not Harper’s first attack on our democracy and freedoms, and it’s probably not the last.
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The UK Parliament has probably more than just Lucas as a former protester, now an MP.
Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff 
Amen to that. I quite enjoy your appeciation of what a democracy really is, and I agree with your take. There must always be people on the forward edge, challenging assumptions and keeping a democracy honest. We don’t like them all the time, but I think we would like our wonderful country a lot less without them and the function the carry out.
Thanks for stopping by again.
It’s irritating beyond belief that there are trolls exploiting the few rioters who damage property, as an excuse to shut down all democratic protest and spend more than a billion dollars of my tax money to prevent me from that basic civic duty. These same trolls are probably in favour of sports fans gathering on the streets of a victorious city, even though there’s probably more damage caused from a Stanley Cup victory riot, than a G20 protest. And the sports rioters can’t even claim to be out for a worthy cause, they are just drunken yahoos taking advantage of mob mentality.
That ‘Mary’ person is described to a T in John Dean’s book ..
““Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds. They would march America into a dictatorship and probably feel that things had improved as a result. The problem is that these authoritarian followers are much more active than the rest of the country. They have the mentality of ‘old time religion’ on a crusade, and they generously give money, time and effort to the cause. They proselytize; they lick stamps; they put pressure on loved ones; and they revel in being loyal to a cohesive group of like thinkers. And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going to go away”
John Dean
Conservatives Without Conscience
Your comments on the US 2nd Amendment are rubbish. Armed resistance has never been allowed in the United States and has always failed, from the Whiskey Rebellion onward. It has rarely if ever been on the side of the angels, as well. The nearest it ever came to success was in the cause of keeping black people white people’s property. Not a good idea to associate oneself with.
Sunsin, we don’t know what affect the 2nd Amendment has had on American history. Without an alternate reality viewer, we can’t definitively say. I think it’s probably created more gun deaths than would have happened without it, but it’s also probably was the last thing keeping America a total dictatorship, that is, until mass media turned the tables. Now they slurp up crud like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, and will happily vote away all of their rights to the point where having a personal firearm won’t make any difference because too few of their neighbours care about anyone but themselves.
I don’t want to be TOO rude, but have you ever studied American history? Have you ever read American newspapers from, say, a hundred years ago? FOX news is disgusting, but it’s a pale shadow of the sort of thing William Randolph Hearst used to get away with, and Hearst is put into the shade by just about any Southern newspaper in the years just prior to the Civil War. Lush Limpballs is a grotesque waste of oxygen, but he’s in a long line of American rabblerousers for fun and profit — ever heard of Father Coughlin (born in Canada, btw), for instance? American society has never been better than it is today. The illusion that it was can only be supported by taking the male-WASP standpoint (that is, imagining oneself a member of the dominant group) and ignoring all the injustices that went unremarked because people just silently assumed, for instance, that non-whites and women were “naturally” inferior. To hear about racism or other offences is depressing, but it’s at least one step up from not hearing about it. And that’s why the past can look so good — you just didn’t hear about it.
And guns? Please. They’re an essential tool in the wilder parts of North America, but fetishizing them is both dangerous and dumb. Their chief non-hunting use in the US, as almost everywhere, has been to keep the lower orders in their place. How do they keep America from becoming a total dictatorship? What is the supposed mechanism? I’ve already pointed out that armed resistance has a 100% failure rate there after the Revolution, and the closest it came to success was in a disgusting cause. Drop the Rambo fantasies. Progress comes from organized political action, not from dreams of playing soldier that distract you from anything useful.
Who’s Mary?
A commenter on Adrian’s blog, and, based on her words, a fascist.