(This
column was published in the North
Shore News on
April 25, 2001)
Wreck in old Quebec City
By Leo Knight
AS
the clouds of tear gas cleared in Quebec City, the
recriminations of the police action have already started.
In
these situations it doesn't seem to matter what the police do,
the hand-wringing socialists seem to always turn the debate
around so it is the fault of the police, not the lunatic fringe
spawned by their nonsense.
After
the first clash with police on Friday, I was asked by a
television group to review the raw video and analyze the action.
What was clear in the takedown of the first sections of fencing
was that this group of headcases had planned their violent
assault very carefully and very deliberately.
Right
behind the fence section that was torn down were people dressed
in black, wearing balaclavas and carrying a variety of weapons;
sawed-off hockey sticks, tire irons, sling shots and petrol
bombs.
They
immediately advanced on the police officers maintaining a
security perimeter who were wearing regular uniforms and were
not outfitted in tactical protective clothing.
One
police officer was hit several times in the head with a tire
iron. He suffered serious head injuries, only one of 43 injuries
sustained by the police during the summit.
One
image was particularly poignant. A police officer in riot gear
was standing with his back to a wall when a petrol bomb was
thrown into the wall immediately above his head. He ducked down
as the flames licked at the wall and his head and back.
On
Saturday, Vancouver Province columnist Jim McNulty had
the audacity to refer to the lunatics who committed these crimes
as "delinquents."
Delinquents?
As if they were engaged in a spot of shoplifting. The phrase
"urban terrorist" comes much closer to the mark than
the word delinquent.
Then
there was Saturday's Globe & Mail prominently
featuring on the front page, a column by Naomi Klein, another
incipient social engineer. She described how the police
"kidnapped" her friend Jaggi Singh.
Singh,
you'll recall, was at the heart of the plans to
"arrest" Indonesian strongman Suharto at the APEC
conference at UBC in 1997. He is the leader of something called
the Anti-Capitalism Action Group or some such nonsense. His
group is against our whole political system, seemingly happy to
give Marxism another shot. He's also quite happy to support
those who would use violence as a method of protest.
None
of what you saw in the Wreck of Quebec has anything to do with
the right to protest. It has everything to do with union and
leftist rhetoric designed to do nothing more than achieve a
uniform standard of mediocrity.
And
then there's Maude Barlow, the blustery and unabashed shill for
her Council of Canadians. She stood in front of the cameras and
blamed the whole thing on the security fence. She even did her
best to rip off Ronald Reagan, ironically a staunch free-trader,
when she babbled, "Take! Down! This! Wall!" with all
the indignation she could manage.
Such
drama. Such theatrics. Such drivel.
For
Maude Barlow, Audrey McLachlan, Raj Pannu, Naomi Klein and
anyone else who still believes socialism works, here are some
realities. The security fence was much-needed, as was so aptly
demonstrated by the individuals who perpetrated the violence.
The
police reacted with restraint under some very difficult
circumstances and with the eyes of the world upon them. There
were two Seattle police officers present as observers, trying to
see what they could learn and apply after their experience in
the so-called Battle in Seattle. Both said afterward they were
very impressed with their Canadian counterparts.
It
is the responsibility of the police to protect Canadians and
those who we invite here as our guests.
It
has been known for a long time what these urban terrorists were
going to attempt. This wasn't speculation. The police security
measures were based on hard intelligence and which, I might add,
proved remarkably more accurate than Maude Barlow's "the
sky is falling" claptrap about NAFTA.
Protest
and disagreement are hallmarks of this or any democracy. But
protest and disagreement are a far cry from what we witnessed in
Quebec on the weekend. That was lunacy. The sort of lunacy that
Barlow and certain media types seem delighted to foster.
What happened in Quebec was not the fault of the police. Nor was it because a security fence was erected around the perimeter. It happened because some people are happier to destroy a society rather than build and make it better.
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