The Left's Playbook On Avoiding Responsibility for G20 Riots...

...Is to blame everyone else but themselves.

In the days following a riot in Toronto which has eventually spawned 600 arrests, Canada's left has emerged with a rather predictable playbook on avoiding their share of the responsibility.

Cast the fingers of blame everywhere but where they actually belong.

Blame the police. Blame Stephen Harper. Blame anyone but the anarchists themselves, and the left-wingers who share their agenda.

In particular, some of the claims -- that the riots were actually started by agents provocateurs -- simply don't hold water. For example, one left-wing blogger insists that the rioters and riot police were wearing the same shoe.

This is a claim that can be swept aside with a cursory examination of the photographs in question. In one case, not only is one of the rioters wearing sneakers, but the shoes are actually rather different:

By examing the photo, one can determine that the shoes worn by the rioters have a matte finish. One can also identify what appears to be laces on the shoe.

By examining the other photo offered as evidence, the importance of these details becomes evident:

The shoe worn by Toronto riot police have no laces. Moreoever, they have an entirely different finish.

They clearly are not the same shoe. It doesn't even require an enlargement of either shoe to glean this detail (although it helps).

It can't help this blogger's case that the only one of these three photographed in the act of an offense -- the one spray-painting the police cruiser -- is the one wearing the aforementioned sneakers.

But the agents provocateurs angle is simply a recycled page out of the left-wing playbook. While there were almost undoubtedly uncover officers amongst the protesters in Toronto, there is absolutely no evidence that any of them have acted in this manner.

Not that there aren't a few left-wingers who aren't interested in waiting to see any evidence:

It certainly must help to declare the police officers -- the ones who are actually trying to turn back the tide of lunacy in the midst of these riots -- guilty until they are proven innocent.

It's a martginally more advanced tactic than simply blaming Stephen Harper on account of the choice of venues, as some left-wingers have done. The detail that black bloc anarchists showed up at rural areas such as Gleneagles, Scotland, must simply evade them.

But this is, frankly, the reaction that one should expect when it becomes publicly evident that the far left shares a common agenda with lawless terrorist thugs like the anarchist black bloc.

It's so much easier to evade responsibility than to own up to it.