Leaderboard

Did you not mean that the Feds are detaining troublemakers. They have the right to do so by law.

Yesterday BLM protesters vandalized statues of Sir John A. MacDonald, Canada's first Prime Minister, and Egerton Ryerson, the founder of public education in Ontario. The basis of this destruction of public property and memorials to important Canadian public figures is a very narrow interpretation of these figures' careers for the role played in founding residential schools. There seems to be little understanding of the fact that there were no Indigenous schools before the first public schools in Ontario, which were founded by churches and government. Many small remote communities didn't have local schools and so attendance required residency near the schools, which is still the case today for Indigenous students from remote communities who want to attend an Indigenous run high school. No doubt there was mistreatment of Indigenous and suppression of Indigenous culture, but such ideas were considered progressive and civilizing at the time. Education was highly valued. Abuses happened commonly to non-Indigenous in schools until quite recently, yet only a fool would say that we shouldn't have publicly funded education because of those abuses. Allowing the great achievements of the founding of Canada and the public education system to be ignored and twisted by an overblown narrative about evil colonialism is a blatant misinterpretation of history and a degradation of the antecedent progressive steps that have built the great country we have today with our rights, freedoms, and protections for minorities. Games are being played by radical, ignorant activists who are refusing to leave police stations, even after they are released and charges are dropped, in order to draw media attention and public support, as Toronto Police Chief Saunders noted after yesterday's incident. Is it time to increase sentencing for vandalism of monuments? Is it time to declare destructive forms of protest as acts of terrorism?

I've seen complaints of this a lot over the last month or more around the internet. How the media is avoiding coverage of the violence in these protests. You'd hardly know that violent protests were still going on, in fact, were it not for the occasional video from Chicago or Portland to find its way onto a brief news item. But Michael Tracey puts it into the best, most succinct perspective I've yet encountered. From large metro areas like Chicago and Minneapolis/St. Paul, to small and mid-sized cities like Fort Wayne, Indiana and Green Bay, Wisconsin, the number of boarded up, damaged or destroyed buildings I have personally observed — commercial, civic, and residential — is staggering. Keeping exact count is impossible. One might think that a major media organisation such as the New York Times would use some of their galactic journalistic resources to tally up the wreckage for posterity. But roughly six weeks later, and such a tally is still nowhere to be found. It should be more widely known that large swathes of a major American metropolis, Minneapolis/St. Paul, still lies in rubble over a month after the riots. And the main perpetrators of this destruction — namely those who committed the most incendiary arson attacks — were, by many accounts relayed to me directly, white Left-wing activists. Refusing to seek out and accurately present this information reflects the mainstream media’s propensity to operate under predetermined, politicised assumptions that are antithetical to any rightly-understood conception of journalism. So why, exactly, has the scope of these riots been so assiduously downplayed, and the opinions of those who experienced them first-hand been largely ignored? A number of potential explanations ring true. For one, media elites desperately do not want to undermine the moral legitimacy of a ‘movement’ that they have cast as presumptively righteous. And highlighting that urban minority populations are generally less enthusiastic about a movement whose mantra is “Black Lives Matter” would be embarrassing for obvious reasons. https://unherd.com/2020/07/the-ugly-truth-about-the-blm-protests/

Excellent points made by the author of the thread.

I don't know. Good question though. I think Trump said 'some of them are very fine people' and the rest followed.

For all the non-stop hysteria painting Trump as some kind of maniacal fascist, it truly is a lousy fascist who fails to leverage widespread social unrest and instability to consolidate power. That's a great sentence, and it captures the illogic behind the endless attacks on Trump. At this point, he has become such a figure of abject corruption in the minds of so many that merely bringing him into the discussion justifies anything. If he isn't doing anything, then it's inaction. If he is doing something, then it's a step in his quest to become a dictator. It reminds me of the twin criticisms of GW Bush: that he was a diabolical genius architecting a dark new society while everyone slept... and that he was simultaneously an idiot. I find the criticism that the physical damage is being underplayed convincing but I'm not sure what it means. USA Today mentioned that the costs are high in the context of an article advising businesses how to get assistance. FOX has the most recent news on this. But even FOX hasn't reported on this angle in almost a month. Is it because things have been more calm ? Or is it because media wants to downplay something that may be shaping up as an actual insurrection. An actual insurrection is almost a bigger problem for Biden than Trump, as the Democrats have been reluctant to say anything against these protests. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/george-floyd-protests-expensive-civil-disturbance-us-history

WE? Money. These two brothers - like Epstein - gave money to people.

I know these are not your sentiments , but it does amaze me how the left thinks.... SO it's OK to destroy someone else private property, such as store fronts , who's owners may have everything in their world tied up in their Private enterprise, the store owners had nothing to do with what the state does, or does not do, but they were the main targets of BLM, or Antifa... And now the feds are telling them enough is enough and they are starting to protect fed property.... and they Protestors find that a little confusing....They may have had a point if they just destroyed government property but that is not what happened, Free TV s for everyone....

NO, in the grand scheme of things these men signed up to be part of an German SS unit, one that has been accused with killing polish women and children and much worse, Allied troops spent a great deal of energy to weed out German regular military troops from the SS troops, because of the crimes they had committed.. Including the murdering of Canadians troops just after D-Day, i get it a different SS unit.... I'm sure Canadian soldiers for those units are more than pleased to find out there is 2 memorials set up to honor these SS troops in our nations cities.... I'm not saying mother Russia was innocent of any war crimes, neither is Canada, and we don't have any memorials set up to honor Stalin here in Canada , atleast i hope not........But you don't get a pass because they just killed Russia's, what about the polish women and children they murdered, along with the countless others we have not heard about....These units were brutal by all means, each and everyone of them... One has to ask ourselves , 10 years from now would it be ok to set up a memorial for the Taliban in downtown Ottawa, for those that fought just Russians, or just Americans. and then have a Canadian charged with a hate crime for painting it.....As much as i love the left, thats crossing a line.... Besides they have a paragraph recorded in history books for all to read, if anyone is interested, what they don't deserve is a memorial to honor those that served or took part in the crimes they did....

What you see is an orchestrated effort, probably by certain political forces with big financial backing, to allow chaos and destruction to reign in the streets. Yet they vehemently deny access to federal security forces that want to enter and restore civil order. The reasons why should be very obvious. All roads lead to 2020.

And if you test more you have more infections. That was Trump's point in the claim cases of infections are an untrustworthy stat when they are making hyperbolic statements about the high number of cases. The stat contains mitigating factors. In fact, that might have been a better Gotcha for Wallace to use if he'd been aware of it. Trump is using infection rate built into the stat when it serves him. Wallace didn't do that though. Instead he used a different stat to judge Trump's and mistakingly call him a liar. It's interesting though that both stats show the same thing the pandemic has lessened judged by both metrics. The fall is more explicit with death rates against infections is all. But both deaths per 100k population and death per infection show a precipitous drop from pandemic highs. In fact even per 100k America is below some of the more developed countries in Europe. You seem to want to divert from Trump though and when convenient make the point that the Governors of states like Florida and Texas are guilty of some horror show crime by reopening. I notice though that California is also experiencing the same slight rise in deaths and infections without reopening. California is Democrat run. I also notice when you compare these states to Europe you forget about Sweden. Texas reopened in April. There never was a lockdown in Sweden. Sweden has yet to experience any kind of second wave. So if your point is Republicans (and only republicans) reopening states is some sort of proof of bad management because look at the more socialist controlled countries of Europe, very well. Explain Sweden. BTW Wallace didn't do anything other MSM commentators aren't doing in comparing Trump's stat to a different metric and hoping people don't notice it still doesn't show the horror they're hoping for.

Agree . . . . everyone is a 'victim'. A victim of bad personal choices, a victim of this or that. Everything that's wrong with you is someone else's fault. John A. Macdonald caused you to sit on your fat lazy ass and eat 3lbs. of Oreo cookies. Stephen Harper caused the fender to rust out on your '86 Oldsmobile Omega. Donald Trump caused you to not show up for work . . . . the list is long. Country of pussies and whimps . . . . no one's responsible for themselves.

Normally I wouldn’t support this, but considering the anarchy and the fact that BLM (and ANTIFA) appears to have the privilege of looting, destruction, arson, racism, violence, rioting and murder across the country, all seemingly with 100% support from MSM and Democrats, something has to be done. The BLM movement is not about anti racism anymore, it’s a movement about murdering Americans and orchestrated events designed to create civil unrest. Over 50 nights of violence and destruction, so I don’t see the thinking that allows for destruction of property, arson, violence, looting and even killing as a means of legitimate protest. Thread here worth reading https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1284885615146700802.html

This is another city that's promised to defund police, to cut their budget in half, in fact. And even before this current BLM shit Seattle police were leaving in droves, not wanting to work for this city where their hands are tied and the streets are filled with homeless addicts. The city is already short a lot of police because they haven't been able to hire them. Anyone wanting to become a cop goes somewhere else. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-city-council-homes-in-on-police-department-cuts-as-defunding-proponents-and-opponents-mobilize/

Seattle is erupting again with stores looted and trashed, all the right wing of course...lol

ANTIFA is a fascist terrorist group that uses violence and property destruction as tools to bring fascism to the U.S. They have violently attacked innocent men, women and children and will not stop until their fascist goals are realized. Is this objective .. https://www.bizpacreview.com/2020/07/17/major-networks-ignore-nightly-violence-and-riots-in-portland-as-mayor-blames-it-on-trump-administration-947925 Interesting thing.. I searched using duckduck go and got some results... I searched again using google and got completely different results, a whole page of white supremacy and far right groups etc.

By June 19, the violence in the Twin Cities had resulted in one death, 617 arrests, and upwards of $500 million in property damage to 1,500 businesses, the second-most destructive period of local unrest in United States history after the 1992 Los Angeles riots. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests_in_Minneapolis–Saint_Paul So that pegs damage in just the rather small twin cities at half a billion dollars. Fifteen hundred businesses destroyed. Anyone see that in the media? I think they reported on one or two fires the first few nights, especially the police precinct, and then nothing. This study pegs the cost of the rioting across the country as $400 million on just the first weekend. https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/28/in-first-weekend-of-riots-looting-damage-in-20-major-cities-exceeded-400-million/

Michael Tracey (born August 1948) is a British-American academic and television producer with a specialty in public service broadcasting. He acquired notability as a result of his tenure as the head of the Broadcasting Research Unit in London, a British think tank dealing with media issues, and later with his investigative reporting on the death of JonBenét Ramsey. He is the author of The Decline and Fall of Public Service Broadcasting and the Production of Political Television. He is currently a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder.[1] Sounds pretty objective to me.

It's more than that, and you know it, if it were only 5 people one time, I would agree. When they get caught breaking the law they scream foul and demand the perps be released, so we are supposed to sit quietly by while they destroy property. We are fortunate that Canada hasn't reached the level of frenzied rioting and violence it has in the U.S. This is not about anti racism anymore, it's nothing but wanton destruction and a desire to bring down society.

Good OP. I agree with your view on this. I think many sensible Canadians will agree. To me it depends on circumstances. Sentence for vandalism shouldn't be too harsh, but there needs to be some deterrent or else up everything goes. these people are not doing it for the politics, which they barely have, but for shits and giggles. Makes for a great FB feed, and more pussy. My solution is very basic and succinct. Billy-club anyone who is in the way when an officer wants to get through. Billy is your friend.

We have seen more than just this. Buildings burned, looting. Most of all, people have been killed while the 'movement' prevents the authorities from getting to the victim. Do I think it's right to discredit the movement for that? Yes. By and large, yes. the movement needs to discredit these individuals if they want to distance themselves. But they don't...

I'm all for dialogue, but if you're condoning destruction of property as protest, count me out. I never said I was against all of the opinions expressed by the BLM protesters, and I strongly support their freedom to express their opinions. It's the method that's at issue.

I don't think many Canadians would argue seeing the numbers. Not even Trump wants that. You're a broken record on this. Yeah but we really want to watch it.

Not sure why you'd want to visit the US right now. You can catch a flight to the US if you want. No ones stopping you, but when you return you'll be asked to Quarantine for 2 weeks. Truckers are essential because they keep trade going. You know, that economy people like to talk about. The land border will be closed to non-essential travel until the US can get the virus under control. Seems a deal is being worked out to get Hockey and Baseball players to be able to cross the border though. Americans won't be allowed to go to Europe, Canadians will though.