Silly Little Country

Live Theatre in Toronto

The rehearsals are ongoing in earnest now.
The G20 is coming to Toronto and with it much world media. Along with all the world leaders and their various flacks, the international community of professional disruptors, agitators, and other similar idiots (basically a band of over-excited chimps looking for a fight and finding a guaranteed opponent, with the added frisson of doing it in the name of purportedly worthy causes, and in front of an enraptured audience) will be lurking amidst the far greater numbers of sincere people wishing to also use the media to expose their concerns and difficulties with existing policies. As most such past meetings have shown, that small number of pros is capable of wreaking a lot of havoc, as they seem to lack much in the way of respect for people's property or safety.
So the first round of rehearsals, done in public to communicate, has been the preparation of the various security forces, ramping up step by step, from a security fence and a concentration of police, announcement of tools to be used, and a substantially reduced free public access to key areas that will be used in the conference.
This has generated much hand-wringing among CBC types - witness the first appalling half-hour of The Current Monday; this show is the ultimate expression of CBCthought; in fact the host rarely serves as a moderator but wades in as a partisan with the right thoughts if someone strays - here the producers set this host in company with security experts architectural critic Christoper Hume and some junior geography prof from a typically lefty Toronto unversity, against newspaper columnist Lorrie Goldstein, whose expertise was questioned indeed. You'd think from the experts that all of Toronto was being ruined permanently, when for only a few days is a very tiny part of Toronto affected at all. I live in Toronto and there will be no protests or riots in my neighborhood because there will be no media here; there is probably even a reduced police presence here because local police are likely working the small area affected. And in a few days all will be as before, unless people like the loons who firebombed a bank in Ottawa and threatened this meeting with a similar fate have their way and destroy a building or two. If there were none of them we would not even have this burp in added security.
Personally if I new in advance that, say 3%, of the spectators at a baseball game were bent on destruction and violence during the game I'd be disinclined to be involved without some pretty public assurance of a commitment to prevent it all.
Protests have already begun, the official meetings begin tomorrow, and with it the play we have been rehearsing for.
I rather hope it will be a very boring play, with very poor reviews from the media.
Then we can all get back with our more normal squabbling and disagreement.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 11:45 AM