As IF Times

link Vandals mar summit protests in Toronto – Yahoo! News.

This feels like we’re going over old ground, but the events in Toronto over the past few days just begs for comment.  First of all, this statement from the article,

“…These images are truly shocking to Canadians…”

clearly makes no sense, since for many weeks in advance, they were already pegging the cost of security at the summit near the one billion dollar mark and even if it’s Canadian dollars, that’s a lot of  police protection for nominally 20 people.    They could have listened to me, http://asiftimes.com/2010/05/28/billion-dollar-bureaucrats/  and had the conference in Labrador.  That way we could have saved money, avoided numerous burnt police cruisers, broken shop windows, looting and the odd cracked skull.  In addition, the professional protestors would all be stuck  in the ferry lineup trying to get to Labrador.  This of course is a failing by the sitting Conservatives, supposedly the sane party of the ones offered to Canadians.   It remains to be seen whether the results of the expensive pow wow will materialize into anything of use since really, the whole thing could have been handled by a day long skype call.

The interesting angle of this event is how the media portrayed the protests. 

“…Saturday’s protest march, sponsored by labor unions and dubbed family friendly…”  As if.  Why would families be interested in marching and protesting along with black clad and masked protestors armed with bricks, sharp sticks and bottles filled with unknown fluid suspiciously capped with cloth wicks?  What would they be protesting?  More pay for less work?  More holidays since 4 weeks is inadequate?  It’s  pretty much a stretch to imply that average Canadians were all up in arms over what was being discussed at the summit, since most don’t even know what the topics were.  More likely, well funded and organized professional protestors were inciting mob sentiments and trying to cause the police to beat upon some innnocent to elicit public sympathy.  The media falls for it and next thing you know, they’re all tsk tsking the governments for putting down the regular folk.  

It’s even a mystery as to what the protestors are against.  Apart from Canada’s notionally conservative government, most or all of the nations represented at the summit are from left leaning/socialist regimes, the U.S. included.  Their guys are already in office!  If the socialists are already in office, you’d have to be pretty nervous about sympathizing with whatever approach the black clad protestors are trying to push.  They seem to be ready to unleash violence at the drop of a peace sign.  Most of them are paid jerks who have no ideology but who enjoy the thrill of mayhem.  In fact, some may be just upset at not being able to afford to fly to the world cup in order to wreak havoc.

Violence seems to be the default calling card of any organization not able to rationally expouse their views.  They depend on media to support their particular point of view which is,  typically about enforcing their point of view.  In this way, a small group can use media to leverage up their visions of nirvana and then to extort the general public to concede some turf.  This is a time tested technique and is standard operting procedure for all fringe groups, political and social.   There seldom is nobility in their causes or justification for their actions.

Throwing tantrums by terrorizing the general public is their only tool.  Like small kids who act out, they should be dealt with accordingly.

link Canada: A billion on summit security well worth it – Yahoo! News.

This may be patently obvious, but if a country needs to spend a billion on security for a summit, maybe the summit should be held somewhere that’s more easily secured, perhaps Labrador or Iqaluit in the Northwest Territories.   If the whole point of gathering exalted poo-bahs and geniuses from all nations is for the face to face serious discussions on solving word hunger, yada yada yada, then why even hold it in a metropolitan area?

Spend the money on some infrasture in the vast and secure north of Canada and pump some money into that part of the world.  Get the army corp of engineers to build an instant conference room and contract out Starbucks for the coffee and banana bread.  The entire security budget can be reduced to the cost of shooing away curious moose.  Considering the Conservatives are supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility and common sense, this is a great disappointment.  Heck if we wanted all kinds of wasteful boondoggle spending, we would have kept the Liberals in office.

The public safety minister Vince Toews states that this expenditure is “worth it”.  ??!!  Really? Why? At the core of the issue, the money will be spent to ensure the safety of notionally 20 some odd representatives and their aides and of course their wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands or some combination thereof.  So if we generously give each entourage 50 people, then that makes security for 1000 people. But let’s really be gracious hosts and allow 100 people per country. That makes the total group count at near 2000 people.  Counting on my fingers rapidly, this breaks down into $500,000 per person for this extravaganza or $1,000,000 per person if you use the smaller entourage figure.

Naturally, this number doesn’t include food, tax or gratuities.  Vince Toews may want to qualify what is meant by “worth it”.  Is it worth it to spend a billion dollars on cops and dogs when you could probably achieve the same result by having a hundred or so army staff secure a Holiday Inn in St. John’s Newfoundland?

We all know the answer to that, but as has been mentioned in an earlier post, the real reason that the exalted summit is being held in Toronto, is….shopping!  Yes, the spouses had to be enticed to go along and the only way to do this was if the destination had some decent shopping.  Toronto isn’t Hong Kong or Milan, but, hey, you have to keep up the appearance of belt tightening.  As far as Labrador, well, how many sealskins can you buy?