Montreal’s favourite whining activist poster-boy, Jaggi Singh, is still dancing the “I’m innocent” speech in front of a jury. Charged with participating in a riot outside the G20 summit in 2000, Singh has been defending himself, levelling the usual leftist allegations of police bias and brutality, a corrupt system, and the old standby, “it’s not fair!”:
Singh, who is representing himself, suggested he was “No. 1” on a list of 12 photos being circulated by police in part because he was critical of police actions at earlier anti-globalization protests.
Or perhaps it was because he’d participated in and instigated riots before? Nah! Couldn’t be! The police – which everyone knows are just tools of capitalist oppression – must have been out to get him (and his co-defendants).
Anyone notice how at every single one of these so-called “protests” that wind up turning into riots, everyone who is arrested claims police corruption and brutality? Or that they all maintain charges should be dropped against them simply because everyone else wasn’t arrested, too?
If this is sounding an awful lot like the Concordia riots, well, surprise, surprise, many of the same people – including Jaggi Singh – were at that one too. And of course, he was the first to claim police brutality when arrested for ignoring a court-order on a rabble-rousing trip to Israel. Arrests – and counter-charges of police brutality – seem to follow this guy around like glue. But I suppose it’s all coincidence, right? Or maybe just an oppressive capitalist ploy.
After all, how dare anyone criminalize rioting?
Singh’s case is due to go to the jury for deliberation today. It remains to be seen whether they buy into the tapdance. The smart money says they probably will.
Have you been to an anti-globalization protest Sari? We had one in Ottawa a year or two ago. Very scary. The police walk around in giant body armour (looking like ninja turtles). Unmarked vans (that stick out like sore thumbs) whiz around the city carrying bands of riot police. Hooded anarchists with black dogs wander in the streets.
So I believe that, in such an heightened atmosphere, violence can get out of hand. The seattle disturbances (at the abortive laucnh of the WTO trade round) were ultimately deemed a police riot.
So give ol’ Jaggi a break. So he’s a left wing radical — they’re a Canadian tradition. As is abuse of police powers against the far left.
As someone who was present at the g-20, the Summit of the Americas, and various other protests, I can safely say that the arrest of Singh and others are politically motivated. He is an organizer who has never commited an act of violence– I should know, I was there.
If you think that the mere fact of organizing a protest should lead ot jail time, good for you. Then I’ll go off and hold Jesus personally responsible for the inquisition.
I guess the word of an anonymous person should be taken as a rock-solid alibi, then?
And Jesus didn’t organize the inquisition.