Speaking of Douchebags... Let's Slug Some Douchebags

In the wake of an announcment that a number of suspects have been arrested in relation to the G20 riots -- some of them for the vandalism and arson of police cruisers -- the time seems about right to trot out a few of the douchebags who fell all over themselves trying to accuse police of having provoked the riots and give them the rhetorical punch in the face they so richly deserve.

Among them is a an individual who attempted to identify rioters as Agents Provocateurs based on wearing the same shoe. They weren't wearing the same shoes. One of the vandals pictured was even wearing sneakers.

Even more comical was Terry Burrows, who offered dark and grainy photographs of car-smashing Black Bloc hooligans and declared them to be "clearly" the same boot as worn by riot officers. the dark and grainy photos he offered as evidence actually made nothing clear.

Also rather comical is Rady Ananda, who declared one Black Bloc rioter to be an provocateur based on his hairstyle. His hairstyle!

Even more remarkable was the efforts of our aforementioned shoe-sleuth to attempt to identify one of the men who smashed and torched a police cruiser as an undercover officer at the 2008 Montebello Summit.

That individual has since been identified as 23-year-old Andrew Loughrin and arrested.

Another "enterprising" blogger singled this individual out as a police provocateur based on -- get this -- he was wearing an expensive jacket. (Apparently, anarchists must never go skiing.)

Very amusingly, one progressive blogger managed to conveniently forget the "Black Bloc" meme the anarchists utilitized at the G20. A the 2:35 mark of the video this individual posted, an undercover officer is identified as being dressed as an anarchist. One presumes that he was dressed to instead pass as a member of the little-read-of "Blue Bloc" (not to be mistaken with your blue box).

Even more comically in this video, if a Black Bloc anarchist happened to be wearing a black boot, it was treated as the same black boot as worn by any other Black Bloc anarchist.

It's an amusing case of the famed confirmation bias -- in which individuals look only for details that confirm their conspiracy theories, and discard all others -- at work. It's also another black eye for individuals who "speculated" about the presence of police instigators at the G20 summit.

Thank God For Global Research (Thank God For Comedy)

As discussion of the riots at the G20 Summit continue to dominate Canadian discourse, one has to take some time out from the sobering realities -- such as the reality that Toronto Chief of Police Bill Blair almost single-handedly appropriated additional police powers via deceit -- for a little comic relief.

To that, one should say "thank god for the Centre for Research on Globalization. Amidst all the genuine causes for concern surrounding the G20 Summit -- such as unwarranted police crackdowns on peaceful protesters -- the G20 riots have managed to narrowly focus the mania that has infected that organization, and should remind a great many people why they aren't to be taken seriously.

That the CRG isn't widely viewed as a haven for 9/11 truthers should be attributed strictly to the fact that they largely have no public profile. In reality, their website is a dark corner of the internet where little light tends to be cast.

9/11 truthers -- who, far more than climate change skeptics could be deemed to be akin to Holocaust deniers -- such as Christopher Bollyn, Michel Chossudovsky and David Ray Griffin, among many, many others, have disseminated their filth through the Global Research website.

Following the G20 riots, the site's 9/11 narrative seems to have infected recent events, as numerous conspiracy theories are being peddled through that website, with little to no evidence being offered in support.

For example, Rady Ananda suggests that the infamous black bloc may actually be a police psyops group. She offers no evidence whatsoever to back this suggestion, other than suggesting that the individual in this video (pictured left) is a "a clean-cut man with a military style haircut".

Apparently, the idea that any black bloc anarchist could have their hair cut short under their military-style caps is utterly unthinkable to Ananda.

There's little question that police indeed used undercover officers at the G20 summit in order to monitor protests, and to better counter organizations such as the black bloc. But when one compares the video Ananda offers to actual video of police getting their UCs out from under cover, it becomes clear that changing clothes huddled in a doorway is not the means by which such officers evade detection.

Ananda is very clearly fishing with no bait. Her colleages from Global Research would be doing the same, if they weren't fishing with scant bait.

Terry Burrows is a little more direct in his accusations.

He falls back once again to the "same shoes" argument, and uses numerous dark and grainy photographs to try to make the case. For example, he insists this photograph (pictured right) "clearly" demonstrates that the police were wearing the same shoes at the black bloc protester pictured below at left.

The self-serving hilarity of it all is undeniable.

Unfortunately for Burrows, that picture doesn't establish anything. The tread on the officer's boot -- the means by which these individuals have been establishing such claims -- are effectively entirely obscured from view.

There's nothing clear about this at all.

Burrows at one point even attempts to offer the belt and the mismatched socks of a black bloc anarchist as evidence that he's an agent provocateur. (The idea that an anarchist miscreant would flaunt fashion by mismatching his socks, or could purchase a black leather belt at the local five and dime is apparently unthinkable to Burrows.)

It's remarkable to find that individuals such as Terry Burrows and Rady Anand can't simply admit, in the wake of these riots, that they and their compatriots tolerated a terrorist element amongst their protests at the G20 Summit.

While the burning of police cars has emerged as the defining image of the G20 Summit (no matter how badly the elft wants that image to be riot cops), another image deserves consideration: it's the sight of a CUPE protester, pink CUPE flag flying high, calmly following the black bloc up a Toronto street while they smash windows and destroy property. This spectacle was captured by a CTV camera on site at the riot.

While a great many protesters eventually did stand up to the black bloc -- chanting "shame on you" at the miscreants who disrupted their peaceful and democratic protest with their violent and anti-democratic tactics -- it seems that the correspondants for Global Research were not among those principled individuals.

Rather, they set out thinking about how they could evade responsibility for their collusion with the black bloc, and smear the police in the process.

It would be shameful if their efforts weren't so utterly laughable.